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  1. Wordshop

     VocabGrabbing Technical Jargon
    Wed Jun 10 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Sometimes our vocational ed (CTE) students have a difficult time reading technical literature because the heavy use of jargon gets in their way, hampering comprehension and frustrating those students who may prefer hands-on learning situations. VocabGrabber can help prevent this experience: students can "grab" a text's jargon beforehand, preview those terms, and then head back to the text with a good understanding of the key concepts they will encounter while reading.

  2. Edulinks

     Summer Reading for Students
    Wed Jun 10 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    Inspire students to keep up with their summer reading!

    Barnes & Noble's Summer Reading Program

    Borders' Kids Reading Challenge

    National Endowment for the Humanities' Summertime Favorites

  3. 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.

  4. Word Count

     Music Lessons for Writers
    Tue Jun 09 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    My husband has a great voice and he loves to sing. Loves it. He's performed in an auditioned community choir called Jubilate since our triplets were age 2. And, yes, I'd appreciate a drum-roll for me — for the essential backup job of looking after three high-maintenance toddlers (now teenagers), alone, one night a week!

  5. Word Routes

     "Jazz": A Tale of Three Cities
    Mon Jun 08 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    New Orleans is widely acknowledged as the birthplace of jazz. But is it also the birthplace of "jazz" — that is, the name for the music and not just the music itself? New evidence shows that the term jazz, also spelled jas or jass in the early days, was in use in New Orleans as early as 1916. However, that doesn't beat Chicago, where the term was applied to music in 1915. And while many of the Windy City's early jazz musicians hailed from New Orleans, Chicago likely borrowed the word jazz from another city: San Francisco.

  6. Blog Excerpts

     Going Down a Bomb
    Mon Jun 08 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    If you were baffled by Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle's use of the expression "going down a bomb," as discussed in this Word Routes column, then wonder no more. Lynne Murphy explains the idiom on her blog Separated by a Common Language. Lynne also makes sense of such Briticisms as "he looks a right twit" and "going down a treat."

  7. Backstory

     Lynne Griffin, Author of "Life Without Summer"
    Fri Jun 05 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    I began writing fiction in 2000. I needed an outlet for my thoughts and feelings following the death of my mother. At the time, I was overwhelmed with emotion and my work counseling parents was very intense. I was writing a monthly parenting column for a Boston newspaper and working on a nonfiction parenting guide. But it's in writing fiction that I found my home. For me novel writing is a wonderful catharsis and a deeply personal means of creative expression.

  8. Word Routes

     The Story Behind "Hobson-Jobson"
    Thu Jun 04 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    I recently made my way to Bloomington, Indiana for the biennial conference of the Dictionary Society of North America, a sublime convergence of unabashed word-nerdery. There was a fascinating array of paper presentations, on everything from grand old men like Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster to cutting-edge techniques in online lexicography. But one paper that I found particularly enjoyable had to do with a Victorian-era "Anglo-Indian glossary" that has had remarkable staying power over the past century or so, perhaps in part due to its memorable title: Hobson-Jobson. The paper, by Traci Nagle of Indiana University, took a look at exactly how the dictionary ended up with such a peculiar name.

  9. Evasive Maneuvers

     Frozen Popsicles and Other Gentleman Cows
    Wed Jun 03 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    Euphemisms, like bedbugs and zombies, never strike when you expect them; they're always lurking under a pillow or zombie master that seemed so harmless.

    So imagine my delight when, right here in the pages of Visual Thesaurus, I read about one of the most delicious, audacious, egregious, preposterous euphemisms of my lifetime or yours — frozen popsicle as a synonym for homework.

  10. Word Routes

     Tracking Down "The Missing Link"
    Tue Jun 02 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    A 47-million-year-old fossil of a newly discovered primate species has been trumpeted in the media as "the missing link" in human evolution. Nicknamed "Ida," the fossil is remarkably well-preserved, but paleontologists have scoffed at the "missing link" claim: it's not even clear if Ida is a close relative of us anthropoids, and in any case, the whole metaphor of "the missing link" only really works in the outdated model of evolution as a linear chain or ladder. But all the hoopla surrounding Ida inspired Nature editor Henry Gee to ask (via Twitter), how long have people been using the expression "the missing link"?
229 230 231 232 233 Displaying 2301-2310 of 3488 Results