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  1. Candlepower

     Get "Smart"
    Mon Jan 26 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Over the last week, I have exercised on an elliptical trainer that had a SmartRate heart monitor; watched movies on a smart TV; applied a product called Smart Serum to my face; and checked messages on a smartphone that has Smart Stay, Smart Pause, and Smart Scroll functions.

  2. Word Count

     5 Questions to Ask About a New Word
    Fri Jan 23 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Language allows us to communicate the ideas in our heads with other people. It is a main way we connect with the world around us. Because of that, language becomes very personal to each user. We form affinities for individual words because of what they mean to us.

  3. Blog Excerpts

     The Future of Dictionaries: A HuffPost Live Chat
    Wed Jan 21 00:00:00 EST 2015
    HuffPost Live hosted a chat about the uncertain future of dictionaries in the digital era. Among the panelists was our own Ben Zimmer, who talked about how the move away from the printed page opens up exciting new possibilities for what a dictionary can do.

  4. Department of Word Lists

     Wayne State Word Warriors to the Rescue!
    Tue Jan 20 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Six years running, the logophiles at Wayne State University, a.k.a. the Wayne State Word Warriors, have curated a crowd-sourced list of rare words that "deserve a bit more love." These are words that used to be commonly known and are still useful, but have started to drop out of the English lexicon. Wayne State Warriors' mission? To bring them back.

  5. Word Count

     Why Writers Should Find a "Me Too" Moment
    Thu Jan 15 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Aside from writing prose, I write songs, maybe five or six a year. Usually I have no idea where they come from. One day I'm strumming my guitar, thinking of this and that, and suddenly a chord or a fragment of melody catches my ear, or a few words pop into my mind. I repeat them and wonder, is this the seed of a song?

  6. Word Routes

     A Far-Fetched Etymology That Seems a Little Cockamamie
    Tue Jan 13 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Etymology can take some peculiar turns as a word criss-crosses different cultures. For the latest installment of Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast, I take the hosts along on the journey of the word cockamamie, which might seem stranger than fiction.

  7. Word Routes

     In a First, the Word of the Year is a Hashtag: "#blacklivesmatter"
    Sat Jan 10 00:00:00 EST 2015
    The American Dialect Society made its 25th annual selection for Word of the Year, and for the first time the winner was actually a Twitter hashtag: #blacklivesmatter. Even though the socially conscious slogan is formed by combining three words, as a hashtag it was converted into something linguistically innovative, attracting the attention of the assorted language scholars who gathered for the vote at the society's annual meeting in Portland, Oregon.

  8. Word Routes

     Presenting the Nominees for 2014 Word of the Year
    Fri Jan 09 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Greetings from Portland, Oregon, where the American Dialect Society is holding its annual conference. On Thursday, in my capacity as chair of the society's New Words Committee, I presided over the nominating session for various categories in our Word of the Year selection.

  9. Word Count

     Clear and/or Unclear
    Wed Jan 07 00:00:00 EST 2015
    On the surface, and/or seems like a helpful but mostly harmless little phrase — a little ugly, perhaps, but still useful for those times when you want to be extra clear about what all the options are. Most people associate the phrase with legal writing, but it turns out that a surprising number of lawyers and judges hate it, claiming that it's actually unclear and thus impossible to interpret.

  10. Blog Excerpts

     The Story Behind Stuart Scott's "Booyah!"
    Mon Jan 05 12:00:00 EST 2015
    ESPN sportscaster Stuart Scott died of cancer over the weekend, and tributes to him have noted his ebullient use of slang, especially his signature word, "Booyah!" For Slate's Lexicon Valley blog, our own Ben Zimmer traces the origins of "Booyah!" back to a hip-hop imitation of gunfire. Read all about it here.
45 46 47 48 49 Displaying 461-470 of 3488 Results