In this 15-second video Serendipity, one of the top seven winners of the 15-Second Student Vocabulary Video Contest we co-sponsored with The New York Times Learning Network, student Nina T. defines a vocabulary word while making a statement about her hopes and dreams.
The contest was conceived as a celebration of the 1000-word milestone in the Vocabulary.com/Learning Network Word of the Day collaboration and produced an amazing array of fun, funny, literary, show-stopping creations we can't wait to share. Results below! (And in Vocabulary List form here.)
But first, from The Learning Network announcement of the contest results:
We've never had more fun judging a contest than we did watching the 500-plus vocabulary videos you sent in — so much fun, in fact, that we couldn't narrow the winners down to a logical five but had to choose seven, and list a hefty number of honorable mentions.
We hope that you had as good a time making the videos as we did viewing them, and that you have now incorporated the word you chose into your everyday vocabulary.
Though some of the technical skills exhibited in these videos were extraordinary, we chose our winners based chiefly on how well or creatively the entries demonstrated an understanding of the word and its use in a specific context. We and our partners at Vocabulary.com are word nerds, after all, not videographers.
Fifteen seconds is not a lot of time, but many entries managed to tell a story nonetheless. For example, the video at the top of this post shows how serendipity can change a student's destiny, while another winning work shows what happens when sleeplessness leads to terrifying hallucinations. We also enjoyed entries, like turncoat and bifurcate, that used literary allusions to get their definitions across, and we were delighted by the number of videos that were simply laugh-out-loud funny.
Unfortunately, though, some of the videos we loved most didn't follow all of the rules — specifically, the ones about pronouncing the word and giving its part of speech. That's just niggling, you might say, except that knowing both of those things is important for understanding and using the word in the real world … which is, of course, why we, and your teachers, wanted you to do this exercise in the first place.
Below, six more winning videos, plus 13 runners-up. Thank you again to everyone who participated; we can't wait until next year when we can do this again.
Winners:
Turncoat, by Ellis and Debby
Onomatopoeia, by Jack D.
Bludgeon, by Hunter and Oliver K. ("Dang is 15 seconds short," they write.)
Caricature, by Per S
Hallucination, by Ashlyn
Bifurcate, by Sam P.
Runners-Up
All five of these videos would have enjoyed the winner's circle...if only they had followed all our directions and included the part of speech and/or pronunciation of the word. Still, we enjoyed them so much we've embedded them anyway:
Pacifist, by APLHS3 Matthew & Andres
Sloth, by Emmett B.
Agglomeration, by Claire R.
Prude, by Anna
Gory, by Thomas B.
And a Few More Runners-Up We Really, Really Liked:
Hypocritical, by Kwaku, Abel and Pablo.
Kleptomaniac, by Andy M.
Courier, by alejandro luis lissette gabriela.
Irony, by APLHS3 – Tracey, Alyssa, Sarah.
Headstrong, by Robin T.
Paranoia, by Kimberly, Brittanae, Donethe and Gisela.
Judges: Ben Zimmer, Georgia Scurletis, and Adam Cooper from Vocabulary.com; Shannon Doyne, Michael Gonchar and Katherine Schulten from The Learning Network.
