When the American Dialect Society selected app as the 2010 Word of the Year, it was a nod to the tech term's sudden ubiquity over the past year or two. And now it's more contested than ever with Apple locked in litigation with two rivals, Microsoft and Amazon, in an attempt to hold on to a trademark for app store. How did we get to the point where, as the Apple slogan goes, "there's an app for that" (regardless of whose store you buy it from)?  Continue reading...

Today, March 23, 2011, is the first annual OK Day, celebrating America's greatest word (or expression?) and most successful export.

It's not the first birthday of OK, of course. OK was born 172 years ago, in the Boston Morning Post of March 23, 1839. But it's the first celebration.  Continue reading...

Have you ever tried to figure out a word in another language because you recognized part of the word from your home language, and then you found out you were on the wrong track? Sounds like you might have been caught in a false cognate trap, the subject of this week's worksheet.  Continue reading...

Last week we presented an excerpt from Robert Lane Greene's fascinating new book, You Are What You Speak, tracing the origins of "language sticklers" back to the early days of English. In this second excerpt, Greene concludes his history of sticklerism with the recent success of the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.  Continue reading...

The Visual Thesaurus will have an exhibit at the annual conference of the Texas Library Association (TLA) at the Austin Convention Center. Visit us at Booth #1324!

The Visual Thesaurus will be making a presentation at the annual convention of the International Reading Association (IRA) in Orlando, FL: "Academic Vocabulary & 21st Century Tools: From District-Wide Initiative To Classroom Practice." Click here for details. Also, visit our exhibit at Booth #547!

The Visual Thesaurus will have a presentation at the Annual Conference & Exposition of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia: "Digital Literacy Tools: The New York Times and Visual Thesaurus." Click here for details, and visit the VT exhibit at Booth #2356.  Continue reading...