http://www.visualthesaurus.com?ad=rss The Visual Thesaurus Online Edition is a magazine available to Visual Thesaurus Subscribers about language, writing, and the creative process. The Visual Thesaurus is an online thesaurus and dictionary of over 145,000 words that you explore using an interactive map. Copyright 2009, Thinkmap Inc. All Rights Reserved. en Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/images/common/logo_on_white.gif http://www.visualthesaurus.com?ad=rss Search for a word in the Visual Thesaurus word http://www.visualthesaurus.com Word of the Day http://www.visualthesaurus.com?word=obtund&utm_source=rss Here's one you don't get to use every day -- mainly, because it's slipped into obsolescence. Obtund (a verb) means to make less sharp, lively, or intense; in other words, to make dull or deaden. Its Latin ancestor also bequeaths us a much more common word: the adjective obtuse. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wd/1309 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2073?utm_source=rss The latest selection for 2009 Word of the Year comes from the good people at Merriam-Webster. Unlike other dictionary publishers that anoint an annual word, Merriam-Webster bases its winner and runners-up on actual user lookups to its online dictionary and thesaurus. So instead of the novelties selected by its competitors (distracted driving from Webster's New World, unfriend from New Oxford American), Merriam-Webster's choice is an old word that worked its way into current events: admonish. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2073 Dog Eared http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dogeared/2074?utm_source=rss The prestigious National Book Awards have been announced for 2009. The winners are: Fiction: Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400063736?ie=UTF8&tag=thevisualthes-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1400063736) Nonfiction: T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375415424?ie=UTF8&tag=thevisualthes-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0375415424) Poetry: Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520258789?ie=UTF8&tag=thevisualthes-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0520258789) Young People's Literature: Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374313229?ie=UTF8&tag=thevisualthes-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0374313229) Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dogeared/2074 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2072?utm_source=rss We were pleased to discover that the Visual Thesaurus has fans in the Blue Man Group, the highly creative outfit that has been producing theatrical shows and concerts for the past two decades. We talked to one of the original Blue Men, Matt Goldman, about how the group has drawn on the Visual Thesaurus for inspiration in both their stage productions and in their latest venture, an innovative pre-K and elementary school known as the Blue School. Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2072 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2070?utm_source=rss Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she looks at some pitfalls in using the word proscribe. Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2070 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2068?utm_source=rss The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced its Word of the Year (http://blog.oup.com/2009/11/unfriend/) for 2009: it's unfriend, defined as "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook." Readers of this space will be quite familiar with the term, as I discussed it along with similar un-verbs on Word Routes in May (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1845/) and then again in September (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1993/) as a followup to my On Language column in the New York Times Magazine, "The Age of Undoing (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20FOB-onlanguage-t.html)." It's nice to feel ahead of the curve on this one, but truth be told, unfriending has been going on for many years. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2068 Blog Excerpts http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2069?utm_source=rss Software engineer Rudi Seitz has set up a fun challenge he calls Quadrivial Quandary: "Each day we present four words from our favorite dictionary sites. Your challenge is to use them all in a sentence that illustrates their meanings." Join in the logophilia here (http://www.quadrivialquandary.com/). Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2069 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2067?utm_source=rss University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron explains how a simple grammar lesson can lead to a clash of civilizations. Everybody knows that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. It's one of those undeniable facts of daily life, a fact we seldom question until we meet up with a case that doesn't quite fit the way we're used to viewing things. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2067 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2065?utm_source=rss We welcome Ben H. Winters, who follows up the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with his own Jane Austen mashup, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. As the publisher, Quirk Books, explains, "Winters expands the original text of Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, swashbuckling pirates, and other seaworthy creatures." Hmm... octopi? Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2065 Blog Excerpts http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2066?utm_source=rss Twitter is becoming a great haven for wordplay. Check out the creativity on display in tweets marked with the hashtag #collectivenouns (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23collectivenouns): "a knot of string theorists," "a sneer of critics," "a wunch of bankers," "a seemingly empty room of ninjas." The website All Sorts (http://all-sorts.org/) is collecting the results of this collective online experiment. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2066 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2064?utm_source=rss November 12th isn't a public holiday, but perhaps it should be. On this day in 1990, a memorandum was produced by the English physicist Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau while working for CERN in Geneva. Entitled "WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project," it might not have seemed so earth-shattering at the time. But it set into motion the Age of the Web: it's hard to overestimate the impact this document has had on our chronically wired culture — and on our language. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2064 Behind the Dictionary http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/2062?utm_source=rss Today is Veterans Day in the United States, and linguist Neal Whitman has been thinking about a question of military usage: if "50,000 troops" refers to 50,000 people, then does "one troop" refer to one person? Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/2062 Evasive Maneuvers http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/evasive/2061?utm_source=rss It's in bad taste to make fun of your followers. It tends to discourage, you know, the following. Still, I can't resist gently heckling one of my recent Twitter followers who described herself as: "Newly married humom of the two cutest dogs in Twitterverse and beyond." Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/evasive/2061 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2060?utm_source=rss Back when I went to high school (that would be in the dark ages when our cave classrooms were lit with Survivor-style torches and we chiseled hieroglyphs onto the walls) I did really well in English, social studies, and law. But I barely survived math. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2060 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2059?utm_source=rss In this Sunday's "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/magazine/08FOB-onlanguage-t.html), I take a look at how the car brand Cadillac remains an emblem of luxury, even though Cadillac itself is no longer really "the Cadillac of cars." In the health care debate on Capitol Hill, we frequently hear high-cost health insurance plans described as "Cadillac plans." And there's another area of American culture where Cadillac continues to have outsized linguistic importance: baseball. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2059 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2058?utm_source=rss Do you know what it means to dogfood a product? Have you ever taken part in a bug bash? Mike Pope, a technical editor at Microsoft, takes us on a tour of some of the quirky jargon that has sprung up at the software giant. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/2058 Teachers at Work http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2057?utm_source=rss I'm in mourning this week: my school is closing. Not the one I work in now, but Stella Maris High School, a small (ultimately, apparently, too small) Catholic girls' school, which I've always described as "on the beach in Queens." It really is on the beach — just about 50 yards from the sand. When we had fire drills, we dispersed to the boardwalk. Stella might be the only school in New York City where students were routinely chastised for wearing bikini tops under their uniforms. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2057 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2053?utm_source=rss Leave it to lexicographers to sneak a word like hypallage into a press release. The occasion is the Word of the Year from Webster's New World Dictionary (yes, it's Word of the Year season already). Webster's New World chose distracted driving as its Word of the Year for 2009, defined as "use of a cellphone or other portable electronic device while operating a motor vehicle." The press release notes that distracted driving features a "linguistic catch" that is "frequently seen in poetry": hypallage. Say what? Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2053 Language Lounge http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/ll/2051?utm_source=rss At a scenic dropoff near the Lounge, whereunder flows the mighty torrent of English, we have lookouts posted whose job is to spot trends. Recently they have reported back on instances of a certain class of words that are ready for a closeup: a handful of nouns formed by fusing the two parts of a phrasal verb. Such words are legion in English (setback, breakdown, frameup, washout, etc.) but we lack a handy term to designate them: snaptos? pairups? glueons? In any case, this month's Lounge is a rundown of our lookouts' pickups. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/ll/2051 Blog Excerpts http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2052?utm_source=rss Exploring a topic discussed here back in April (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1819/), the British linguist John Wells considers how people are forming the past tense of the verb "to text" (often pronounced, like the present tense, as "text"). Read about it on Dr. Wells's phonetics blog here (http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/10/texting.html). Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2052 Contest http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/contest/2050?utm_source=rss For the October edition of the Visual Thesaurus crossword puzzle, we've got a spooky Halloween theme. Figure out the hidden word chain and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt! Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/contest/2050 Announcements http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/announcements/2048?utm_source=rss For the past few years, the Visual Thesaurus has been a proud partner of The New York Times Learning Network, helping students boost their reading, writing and communications skills. We've been working together to develop innovative lesson plans that integrate the Visual Thesaurus with engaging articles from the pages of The New York Times. Now, as the Learning Network gets a new look, re-launched as a Times blog, we're working even more closely to provide new resources for teaching and learning. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/announcements/2048 Teachers at Work http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2046?utm_source=rss Irving Berlin knew it when he wrote, "From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam." Emma Lazarus knew it when she wrote, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Abraham Lincoln knew it when he wrote, "Of the people, by the people, for the people." And Thomas Jefferson knew it when he wrote, near the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and, at the very end, "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2046 Blog Excerpts http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2047?utm_source=rss National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is just around the corner. As the website explains, "Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved." Visit the NaNoWriMo website (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) to learn more. Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/blogexcerpts/2047 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2045?utm_source=rss For the second year in a row, the Visual Thesaurus helped out the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses with its annual Spelling Bee to support the work of independent literary publishers. Once again, the VT supplied the words that challenged some of the leading lights of the New York publishing world. Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2045 Teachers at Work http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2044?utm_source=rss Michele Dunaway teaches English and journalism at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri, but she has a double life: she's also a best-selling romance novelist. Michele has some compelling advice to teachers of writing: "teach the basics first and worry about voice later." Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/2044