http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/?utm_source=rss Copyright 2008, Thinkmap Inc. All Rights Reserved. en Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/images/common/logo_on_white.gif http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/?utm_source=rss Search for a word in the Visual Thesaurus word http://www.visualthesaurus.com Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1393?utm_source=rss Part two of our interview with William Safire focuses on new political terms that have entered the latest edition of Safire's Political Dictionary. Below, for your delectation, you'll find extended excerpts from relevant dictionary entries. Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1393 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1388?utm_source=rss To supplement our two-part interview with William Safire about the new edition of Safire's Political Dictionary, we've provided extended excerpts from the dictionary entries that came up in the course of our wide-ranging discussion. If you want to know the difference between an old pro and a curmudgeon, read on! Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1388 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1194?utm_source=rss Chef Terrance Brennan is the founder of Artisanal Premium Cheese, a company that practices the fine art of affinage -- the age-old craft of maturing and aging cheese to achieve peak flavor. He's also something of a cheese revolutionary -- a chef who's helped Americans discover and appreciate the sublime magic of handcrafted artisanal cheese (we'll get to that word in a minute). What better person to ask about cheese words? Paste. "The body within the rind of the cheese, what the French call the 'pate.' In other words, the interior of the cheese." Farmstead. "Cheese milked and produced from the same farm." Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1194 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1055?utm_source=rss "Baseball has had a phenomenal influence on the English language," says writer and lexicographer Paul Dickson. Paul should know. As the author of The Hidden Language of Baseball and The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary (and over 40 other books!), he's studied the impact of America's favorite pastime on English for the past three decades. Paul graciously shared some examples of baseball lingo that's now part of everyday speech. Designated hitter. "This is a strange construction in English, 'designated 'x'' but it gave birth to the term 'designated driver.'" Hit-and-run. "A baseball play that's been around since the 19th century. When the automobile arrived, all of a sudden the phrase also meant 'a hit-and-run accident.'" Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/1055 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/997?utm_source=rss Beer authority Justin Philips was originally a wine guy -- until his epiphany. "I worked in a wine shop in Boston and we started carrying boutique beers," he explains, "And I got hooked." So hooked went to work for specialty beer importer B. United, and is now opening a beer-focused restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, called the Beer Table, which is where we called Justin to ask about these beer-related words: Head. "Refers to the foam on the top of a glass of beer. Wheat beers are traditionally served with a big monster head that's inch and a half to two inches high and stays around for quite a while." Stout. "A style of beer, originally a heavily malted, lightweight 'session beer.' A session beer is one you can sit down and drink a lot of - it has low alcohol and is very drinkable." Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/997 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/793?utm_source=rss You may remember an interview we did last year with Katie Raynolds, a remarkable 10th grader and dedicated linguaphile from Seattle, Washington. Katie recently spent a busy week with us here at the VT's New York office as our editorial intern, and put together this list of SAT words -- with tips on how to remember them: The SAT, of course, is one of the most important tests a student takes during their scholastic career. I can't help you with the math section, but I thought to give you a useful method for remembering tricky vocabulary. In the list below, I'll show you "memory hooks" you can find right within the word and its Latin root. I'll also share some cool linguistic histories! DubiousRoot:Dubious derives from the Latin word dubitare (to waver, to hesitate)Relatives:DoubtHook:When you see the dub-, you should remember the word doubt. BrevityRoot:Brevity comes from the Latin breve (short)Relatives:Abbreviation, brief, breveHook:If you're more familiar with the word abbreviation, then you should see the brev- in brevity and remember short! Sat, 05 May 2007 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/793 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/790?utm_source=rss You may remember an interview we did last year with Katie Raynolds, a remarkable 10th grader and dedicated linguaphile from Seattle, Washington. Well, Katie just spent a busy week with us here at the VT's New York office as our editorial intern! She graciously put together this word list: I discovered when I searched through the Dept. of Word Lists that they're based on a subject a person is passionate about. So I thought, what is my passion? The answer clearly is: words! I found the following words that serve to describe other words, and I explain how we use them. For some I also included interesting stories about their origins. Eponym, a name derived from the name of a person (real or imaginary). Examples: Achilles tendon (Achilles the Greek hero), Freudian slip (Sigmund Freud), Louisiana (King Louis XIV). Onomatopoeia, words that imitate the sound that they denote. Examples: Pow! Bam! (a type of onomatopoeia that was made popular in comic books), chickadee, meow. Sibilant, a consonant characterized by a hissing sound (like s or sh). The word sibilant comes from the Latin word sibil (hiss), which is actually onomatopoeia for the sounds that a snake makes. Example of sibilance: Sally sells sea shell by the sea shore. Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/790 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/677?utm_source=rss Fancy yourself a fashionista? Check out this fashion word list compiled by Jennifer Smith, former New York fashion designer now copywriter/PR pro for Deuce Creative. You'll be surprised by some of Seventh Avenue's parts of speech. Read on to sharpen your divaspeak... Look. (noun) "Complete outfit, ensemble from head to toe including accessories and shoes. The number of outfits you send down the runway is equivalent to the number of looks in a fashion show." Fitting. (noun) "Review of garments on a live model. Fit, proportion, make and details assessed. Changes are made to garments and patterns based on notes from a fitting." Tchotchke. (noun) (from Yiddish) "Extraneous detail or treatment on a garment, often used negatively. An excess of novelty is often referred to as tchochke. Example: 'The dress appeared fussy, covered in ruffled tchochke.'" Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/677 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/675?utm_source=rss Designing clothes isn't just a leisurely prance down the catwalk: It's art and industry with its very own, often technical, language. The words themselves may seem familiar to us non-designers, but the meanings are anything but. We called New York fashion designer Mary Ping to help us decipher this particular tongue. ( The dress on the left is from a recent collection.) Grain "Refers to the direction of the threads of a fabric. When fabric is woven you have a warp and a weft. The warp are yarns that run parallel to the loom, the weft are yarns that run perpendicular." Shuttle "A tool on a loom to pass yarn through warp to form the weft." Bias "The diagonal direction of yarn. You have yarns running vertically, yarns running horizontally -- the warp and the weft -- and the bias is the 45 degree angle between those two. It gives fabric a natural stretch. When people refer to a "bias-cut dress" it means the entire fabric is placed on the biased grain, or direction. So the dress has a tendency to cling to your body more, because it's stretching out more." Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/675 Department of Word Lists http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/602?utm_source=rss Want to know every top chef's secret ingredient? The right food terms! We called Chef Eve Felder, associate dean of the Culinary Institute of America, to ask her about words to cook by: Bind. "When you bring two disparate ingredients together. You might bind through the emulsification of fat and meat. For example, if I were making sausage, I may add an egg as an additional binding agent to hold the ground meat together." Devil. "It means adding spicy ingredients to food, from the French word for devil, diable. In America, we think of deviled eggs and deviled ham. It may have a spice component but we've mostly gotten away from that." Grease. "A verb, as in to grease a pan. You would use paper towel or a gloved hand to grease a sheet tray or a cake pan with butter or oil." Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wl/602