Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus - An online thesaurus and dictionary of over 145,000 words that you explore using an interactive map.

It's mind-boggling that many people who profess to love language have bizarre, backwards ideas about it based on superstition and hokum. Educated folks who mock evolution-deniers have no problem believing equally unsupported ideas about language—such as "English is worse than ever!" and "Words shouldn't change!" Continue reading...

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Are you a dreamer? I've had a few myself. That one where my pet lizard Ronnie convinced me to betray humanity to the alien lizards who control all governments was a doozy. But that's not the kind of dreamer that made a few recent headlines. Rather, a dreamer is an undocumented immigrant, usually a young person, who may have been brought to the U.S. as a child. Continue reading...

Fun, Language, Politics, Words, Writing

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Click here to read more articles from Evasive Maneuvers.

All avid readers have their own favorite writers. Yours may be Daniel Defoe or Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabokov or Ogden Nash, Agatha Christie or Anton Chekhov, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, P. G. Wodehouse or A. A. Milne, Philip Roth or Stephen King; whom you love matters little. What does matter is that something in the style, the subject, or the subtleties of one or another writer so matches your own passions and quirks that you fall in love with that writer, and year after year you keep returning to enjoy his or her cordial company. Continue reading...

Reading, Writers

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Click here to read more articles from Word Count.

English has no barrier to using a principal verb form—the past participle—as an adjective. I have no argument with this fantastic and flexible feature of English, only with the license it gives speakers and writers to use it in a weaselly way. Continue reading...

Grammar, Language, Writing

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Click here to read more articles from Language Lounge.

Automatically create lists of vocabulary from any text using the Visual Thesaurus VocabGrabber.

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Think you are a good speller? Take the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee and find out!

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January 18th is celebrated as Thesaurus Day to honor the birthday of the author of the first thesaurus, Peter Mark Roget. Get into the spirit by reading our two-part interview with Roget biographer Joshua Kendall here and here. Also check out an ode to the thesaurus penned by Franklin P. Adams here and Johnny Carson's hilarious "Funeral for a Thesaurus Editor" sketch here.

Fun, Language

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On the first Monday in September, the United States observes Labor Day, while Canadians celebrate Labour Day. If you want to know why labour is the accepted spelling in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries like Canada, while Americans prefer labor (and color, favor, honor, humor, and neighbor), check out this classic Word Routes column by Ben Zimmer.

Words

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When Words Collide

August 15, 2016 - 10 Comments

How to Write More Concisely

August 10, 2016 - 7 Comments

Pivoting Toward Neutral-colored Nesting Enclosures

August 3, 2016 - 6 Comments

Elements of Surprise

August 1, 2016 - 8 Comments

The Struggle of Songwriting

July 20, 2016 - 5 Comments