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  1. Word Count

     Unexpected Opposites
    Wed Dec 10 00:00:00 EST 2014
    I occasionally teach a class about using Microsoft Word. In one of the class exercises, students are asked to format a page, and the instructions tell them to "outdent" a heading. After I got several questions about that each class, I realized that lots of people have no idea what the term means.

  2. Behind the Dictionary

     Selfie's Children: The Productive "-fie" Suffix
    Mon Jan 13 00:00:00 EST 2014
    To many, the selfie — a picture of yourself, taken by yourself and shared on social media — is a sign of rampant narcissism. I tend to share that belief. Even before I heard the word, I thought there was something mentally amiss with my Facebook friends who posted over a hundred head shots of themselves. However, as a lexicographer, I have to admit the selfie trend is now broader than the self.

  3. VT Tip o' the Week

     Word Suggestions Panel
    premium content - available only to Visual Thesaurus subcribers Mon May 26 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    If you make a spelling mistake when searching for a word and the word you typed in was not found in the dictionary, the "Word Suggestions" panel will open automatically. Words that are spelled like or sound like the word you typed in will be listed. You can also open the Word Suggestions panel whenever you want, even if the word in the search box is spelled correctly. This is an easy way to see other words that are spelled similarly, or that sound like the word in the search box.

  4. Blog Excerpts

     The Rise of "Cyber Monday"... and New Light on "Black Friday"
    Mon Dec 01 11:00:00 EST 2014
    Today is "Cyber Monday," the day that retailers have anointed as the kickoff of the online holiday shopping season. "Cyber Monday" is a recent coinage, going back to a 2005 press release. "Black Friday," on which "Cyber Monday" is modeled, goes back to the early 1960s, and some newly discovered evidence illuminates its early use.

  5. Evasive Maneuvers

     Bald-Faced Factual Shortcuts
    Wed Oct 03 00:00:00 EDT 2012
    As a euphemism columnist, I admire the work of anyone who catches dodges, evasions, and Orwellian whoppers in their butterfly nets. So I was thrilled, during the Republican National Convention, to find The Week's list of ways the media didn't say veep candidate Paul Ryan was a liar.

  6. Word Routes

     Remembering "The Voice of God"
    Fri Jul 16 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    A great voice was silenced earlier this week with the death of Bob Sheppard, longtime public-address announcer for New York Yankees baseball games and New York Giants football games. Sheppard, who also worked as a speech teacher at the high school and college level in New York, had such a memorable way of announcing players' names that he was fondly known as "the voice of God."

  7. Blog Excerpts

     How Do You Pluralize "Prius"?
    Fri Jan 21 00:00:00 EST 2011
    At the 2011 Detroit Auto Show, Toyota is taking a poll to determine what the plural of "Prius" should be. It's all part of their "Prius goes plural" ad campaign, as they unveil three new Prius models. The Detroit Free Press consulted with some experts, including Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer, to get their take on how to pluralize the Latin-sounding car name.

  8. Blog Excerpts

     How "Black Friday" Spawned "Cyber Monday"
    Mon Dec 02 00:00:00 EST 2013
    In case you haven't heard, today is "Cyber Monday," the day that retailers have decided we should all be flocking to make online purchases for our holiday gift list. Last year, Ben Zimmer explained how the advent of "Black Friday" led to the branding of "Cyber Monday" and other days in the Holy Week of shopping.

  9. Word Count

     Roget: The Man, the Mind, the Thesaurus
    Wed Jun 11 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    Without Peter Mark Roget, there would be no Visual Thesaurus — or any modern thesaurus for that matter. We now take it for granted, but it took a special type of mind to come up with a system for organizing and classifying words and their meanings, in a way that also organizes human knowledge itself. Roget, a nineteenth-century polymath who wrote treatises on everything from physiology to slide rules, certainly had the mind for it. But he also had a deeply troubled personal life, surrounded by mental illness and heartbreaking tragedy. Joshua Kendall has written a fitting tribute to this fascinating figure in his new biography, The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. We got to talk to Josh about the making of the book, and learned how his previous writing about psychology turned out to be an excellent preparation for exploring Roget's intricate mental world. Here is part one of our interview.

  10. Dog Eared

     Summer Reading: Attention Word Lovers
    Mon Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2007

    We called up one of our favorite word lovers to ask her for books picks about a subject near and dear to her heart. Martha Barnette, author and host of public radio's A Way With Words, graciously sent us these terrific recommendations:

    Idiom's Delight by Suzanne Brock. In English, "you stand on your own two feet," but in Spanish, you "fly with your own wings." A beautifully illustrated volume of idioms in Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin that I've given as a gift again and again.

153 154 155 156 157 Displaying 1541-1550 of 3460 Results