Search the Site

Your Search:
111 112 113 114 115 Displaying 1121-1130 of 3460 Results

  1. VT Tip o' the Week

     Words Can Have Multiple Meanings
    premium content - available only to Visual Thesaurus subcribers Mon Feb 11 00:00:00 EST 2008

    Many words have multiple meanings (sometimes called senses). The Visual Thesaurus displays meanings as individual circles connected to words. The word pen for example, has six meanings. Five of the meanings for pen are nouns, and one is a verb. For this reason, the circles in the Visual Thesaurus representing meanings are color coded to indicate their different parts of speech. The most common meaning for pen as a noun is "a writing implement with a point from which ink flows." pen can also be used as a verb. When used as a verb, it means "produce a literary work." What is interesting is that the word pen is not in and of itself a noun or a verb. It is the individual meanings of pen that belong to a particular part of speech.

  2. Lesson Plans

     Branching Out With the U.S. Government
    Tue Jun 14 00:00:00 EDT 2011
    How can students use the Visual Thesaurus and other online tools to differentiate between the three branches of U.S. government and learn the duties — and limits — of each?

  3. Evasive Maneuvers

     Breadcrumbing Challenges in the Environmental Park
    Wed Jul 12 00:00:00 EDT 2017
    One purpose of slang is to keep illegal doings off the radar of any noisy bystanders, especially cops. So even though slang and euphemisms tend to be on opposite ends of the honesty scale, they can both be used as cloaking devices.

  4. Wordshop

     Transform a Minivan Ad into a Word Lesson
    Tue Nov 09 00:00:00 EST 2010
    Word lessons are everywhere--even on minivan billboards. The new ad campaign for the Honda Odyssey prominently features the neologism "Vanquility."

  5. Language Lounge

     A Talking Ghost
    Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2007
    This month we sweep away the cobwebs in the Poetry Corner to spend some time with a poem just over a hundred years old that still speaks loud and clear today.

  6. Weekly Worksheet

     Get Your Pun On With The Bard
    Tue Apr 19 00:00:00 EDT 2011
    The truth is no one really knows when the great bard was born, but Shakespeare's fans celebrate his life and work on April 23rd (ironically, the date of his death). Join us in paying homage to Shakespeare this week by using the Visual Thesaurus to get to the heart of some of his more famous puns.

  7. Word Routes

     National Spelling Bee: Kavya Triumphs!
    Fri May 29 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    In the grueling finale of the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee, 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas emerged as the winner, beating out 10 other frighteningly good spellers. This was her fourth consecutive appearance in the finals of the Bee, and over the years she has gradually crept up to the top spot, moving from 10th to 8th to 4th to 1st place. She was inspired by Nupur Lala, winner of the 1999 competition (and one of the stars of the wonderful documentary Spellbound), and now she joins Nupur in the pantheon of great spellers. Congratulations, Kavya!

  8. Blog Excerpts

     I DARE Say!
    Tue Jan 17 00:00:00 EST 2012
    The Dictionary of American Regional English (a.k.a. DARE) is finally completed — and it only took fifty years to do it! In the Boston Globe, Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer looks back on this monument to American speech, and looks ahead to new ways of approaching dialectology. Read his column here.

  9. Weekly Worksheet

     Investigating the Prefix "Mal-"
    Thu Apr 07 00:00:00 EDT 2011
    If you see a word that begins with the three letters m-a-l, do you get an uneasy feeling? Well, if you don't, maybe you should. This week's worksheet asks students to explore four common words beginning with the Latin prefix mal on the Visual Thesaurus and discover what all of their meanings have in common. Click here to find the worksheet, and here to read the related lesson plan, “Rooting One’s Way to Meaning.”

  10. Teachers at Work

     All Hail Poor Richard
    Wed Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2012
    A penny saved is a penny earned, or so says Ben Franklin. As part of our classroom study on aphorisms and early American literature, we take a bit of a side trip into learning about almanacs. For most high schoolers, the mention of an almanac brings about a blank expression. Yet the 200+ year old Farmer's Almanac is still alive and kicking, although the hole (for hanging on the outhouse door) has disappeared.
111 112 113 114 115 Displaying 1121-1130 of 3460 Results