http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/?utm_source=rss Exploring the pathways of our lexicon 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/cm/wordroutes/?utm_source=rss Search for a word in the Visual Thesaurus word http://www.visualthesaurus.com 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 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 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 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 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 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 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2043?utm_source=rss In this Sunday's "On Language" column (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage-t.html) in the New York Times Magazine, I delve into the history of the title Ms. used as a marriage-neutral title for women. As I revealed here on Word Routes back in June, the earliest known proposal for the modern use of Ms. appeared in the Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican on November 10, 1901. And as the proposal reemerged over the ensuing decades, two nagging questions kept getting asked: how do you pronounce it, and what does it stand for? Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2043 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2037?utm_source=rss My wife recently spotted the following perplexing line on Crabtree & Evelyn's website, advertising their hand soap (http://www.crabtree-evelyn.com/eng/categories/hands-feet/hand-care/hand-soap): Our gentle cleansing liquid soaps are pH-balanced and soap-free. That's right, they're selling soap-free soap. I've heard of a "nothing-burger," but "nothing-soap"? Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2037 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2015?utm_source=rss When Columbus arrived in the New World 517 years ago, this pivotal moment of cultural contact was fraught with misunderstanding. Upon finding the native Lucayans on the small Caribbean island where he made landfall, Columbus dubbed them Indians, under the mistaken impression that he had navigated all the way to the eastern shores of Asia. Explorers and cartographers quickly figured out that Columbus was utterly mistaken, and yet even now his monumental error lives on in the word Indian to refer to indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2015 Word Routes http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2014?utm_source=rss It was all over the news yesterday: according to a new poll from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, whatever is the word that Americans find most annoying. The poll asked respondents which word or phrase bothered them the most, and whatever easily swamped the competition, with 47 percent naming it the most annoying. You know came in at 25 percent, it is what it is at 11 percent, anyway at 7 percent, and at the end of the day at 2 percent. Despite the widespread media attention, we should ask: does this poll really tell us anything useful? Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2014