Vocabulary Shout-Out - | Vocabulary.com

Reviewing Disney's new Broadway adaptation of Aladdin, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood describes Jonathan Freeman's Jafar as an "epicene menace." Let's take a look at what epicene through a picture of Jafar. Continue reading...

Anyone traveling New York City's Park Avenue this spring will have the chance to contemplate the meaning of the word maelstrom, thanks to a sculpture by artist Alice Aycock described by the The New York Times, as "a spiky assemblage of aluminum ribbons that stretches for some 70 feet." Continue reading...

Announcing changes to the SAT Wednesday, College Board president David Coleman expounded on why synthesis is the kind of word he wants to swap in for the "SAT words" of old. Let's take a closer look at why. Continue reading...

Unpacking arboreal, canine, and monitory reveal wit and fun(!)in a David Gates review of Lorrie Moore's latest collection of short stories, "Bark." Continue reading...

Just weeks after we saw miscreant used to describe Chris Christie, we see it again in Sunday's New York Times, where writer William D. Cohan used it to describe the wolf of "The Wolf of Wall Street" fame, Jordan Belfort. Continue reading...

Meditating on the contrast between the "vintage" men's downhill races and the newer, funky-vocabulary-intensive snowboard halfpipe and slopestyle events, New York Times writer Christopher Clarey used a fairly funky piece of vocabulary himself: quadrennium Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary

Writing for The New York Times last week about the tricky process of translating dialect from one language to another, literary translator Anthony Shugaar used the not-often-seen interlard. Continue reading...

Topics: Vocabulary

Vocabulary.com Blog Vocabulary Shout-Out

"Aladdin" Jafar Styled for Broadway as "Epicene Menace"

A Disney villains one virtue may be teaching us the meaning of an unusual word

"Maelstrom" Writ Large on Park Avenue Through July

Alice Aycock's Teaches Passersby a New Word

College Board Chief David Coleman Loves "Synthesis." Here's Why.

It's "powerful and widely useful knowledge"

Lorrie Moore's "Bark" is "Arboreal"...and Fun!

Unpacking meaning, revealing wit

Another "Miscreant" Sighting

This one's "much mayhem" on Wall Street

Relearning the Olympics-Friendly "Quadrennium" Every Four Years

Turns out, that's not enough for us to remember it.

A Cooking Word Escapes the Kitchen: "Interlard"

It describe a technique for "greasing" writing or speech

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