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  1. Contest

     The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: July Edition
    Fri Jul 30 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    It's the dog days of summer, but the Visual Thesaurus crossword puzzle should perk you up. Solve it and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!

  2. Blog Excerpts

     The AP Throws in the Towel on "Hopefully"
    Fri Apr 20 00:00:00 EDT 2012
    The big news in the copy editing world this week was the revelation that the Associated Press Stylebook would no longer hold the line against the long-stigmatized use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb to mean "It is hoped." The announcement elicited some strong reactions both pro and con. Here is a roundup of some of the online responses to the stylebook change.

  3. Word Routes

     The Origins of "Black Friday"
    Fri Nov 25 00:00:00 EST 2011
    Today is the day after Thanksgiving, when holiday shopping kicks off and sales-hunters are in full frenzy. The day has come to be known in the United States as "Black Friday," and there are a number of myths about the origin of the name. Retailers would like you to believe that it's the day when stores turn a profit on the year, thus "going into the black." But don't you believe it: the true origins come from traffic-weary police officers in Philadelphia in the early 1960s.

  4. Dog Eared

     Anu Garg's Books
    Wed Nov 14 00:00:00 EST 2007

    Anu Garg, the creator of the popular Word.A.Day email we interview in this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature, recommends these books on words and language:

    Word Origins by Anatoly Liberman

    Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall

    The Oxford Guide to World English by Tom McArthur

    The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots by Calvert Watkins

  5. Word Routes

     On the Trail of "Bailing Out"
    Tue Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    The latest headlines are dominated by news of the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a $700 billion "bailout" of the financial industry. As I explained on the Voice of America program "Wordmaster" last week, bailout in the financial sense, meaning the rescue of a bankrupt or near-bankrupt entity, is a figurative extension from the world of aviation. A pilot who needs to make an emergency landing bails out to safety. That part of the term's etymology is relatively clear, but figuring out its ultimate origin is a bit trickier.

  6. Word Routes

     Just Say No to Nosism!
    Fri Oct 08 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    Last Sunday I wrote an On Language column for The New York Times Magazine about the editorial we, and all the sarcastic jokes that have been made about the presumptuous pronoun. "Nameless authors of editorials may find the pronoun we handy for representing the voice of collective wisdom," I wrote, "but their word choice opens them up to charges of gutlessness and self-importance." Since the column appeared, some of those voices of collective wisdom have risen to defend themselves.

  7. Contest Corner

     VT Treasure Hunt: Winner!
    Wed Jun 10 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Last time in Contest Corner, the challenge was to track down the answers to ten questions in a Visual Thesaurus treasure hunt. Congratulations to Catherine McIntyre of the English Language Institute at Texas A&M University for submitting ten correct answers. Catherine wins a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt! Her answers follow below.

  8. Dog Eared

     Great Slang Dictionaries
    Thu Jun 18 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    When we interviewed Michael Adams about his new book, Slang: The People's Poetry (part one here), we asked him to recommend the best dictionaries of English slang available. If you're curious about the meanings and origins of slang terms, these are the go-to references.

  9. Candlepower

     Red Pen Diaries: The Solutions Problem
    Thu Dec 03 00:00:00 EST 2009
    I've got a problem with solutions. Well, it's not solutions, per se, but the word "solutions." Actually, it's not even the word "solutions"; it's the notion that all you have to do is throw that word onto your home page and the world will beat a path to your door.

  10. Teachers at Work

     Using Music to Connect Literature
    Thu May 24 00:00:00 EDT 2012
    Almost 30 years ago, back in the stone ages of 1983 when records debuted on vinyl and the idea of iTunes just another science fiction, my Advanced Placement English teacher Claudine Vignery taught me something I still use today. She taught me that everything is connected. At the end of a unit she'd let us listen to music. She'd pick out a song, put it on the record player, and for around three to four minutes we'd sit quietly and listen.
131 132 133 134 135 Displaying 1321-1330 of 3460 Results