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  1. Word Routes

     2014 Spelling Bee: Co-Champions Share Spotlight in a "Competition Against the Dictionary"
    Fri May 30 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    It was another dramatic finish at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. After the 46 semifinalists were whittled down to the dozen contestants for last night's finals, I tweeted, "12 kids enter, 1 kid leaves." Little did I know that two kids would be named co-champions in the Bee's first tie since 1962.

  2. Word Routes

     2014 Spelling Bee: 46 Spellers Survive, Advancing to Semifinals
    Thu May 29 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    It's time once again for the Scripps National Spelling Bee! Two hundred and eighty-one young spellers gathered near Washington, D.C. and sweated through the preliminary rounds yesterday. For the second year, those rounds included not just questions about the spelling of words but also their definitions. After all was said and done, 46 survived to advance to Thursday's semifinals.

  3. Blog Excerpts

     The 2014 Spelling Bee Is Here!
    Wed May 28 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    It's time once again for the Scripps National Spelling Bee! The preliminaries are today, and the nationally televised semifinals and finals are tomorrow (May 29). As in past years, our own Ben Zimmer will be live-tweeting the competition from the @VocabularyCom Twitter account and reporting on the results here in his Word Routes column. In the meantime, catch up on our coverage of the format changes introduced last year that brought vocabulary questions into the mix: here and here.

  4. Word Count

     "Amongst," "Amidst," "Whilst": Pretentious or Quaint?
    Mon May 26 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    Whilst we often lament that language has become too informal, there are times when we try to make it too formal, and thusly too stiff-upper-lipist. "Amongst" and "amidst" are perfectly fine words, listed in dictionaries and everything, but they fall a bit on the "I know big words" scale of writing.

  5. Word Count

     Memorial Day: Is It "Celebrated" or "Observed"?
    Fri May 23 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    On the last Monday in May, Memorial Day is celebrated in the United States. But wait: is celebrated the right word? Would it be more appropriate to say Memorial Day is observed? Wendalyn Nichols, an experienced editor and lexicographer, guides us through this usage quandary.

  6. Behind the Dictionary

     History in the Toolbox: The Vocabulary of Electrical Units
    Wed May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    I am guessing that the average electrician doesn't realize how much history is knocking about in his or her toolbox. Volt, amp, ohm, watt—these electrical units are all eponyms, derived from the names of pioneers in the field. Let's have a tour.

  7. Blog Excerpts

     Merriam-Webster Adds New Words, While Collins Crowdsources
    Tue May 20 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    Merriam-Webster has added a batch of new words to its Collegiate Dictionary, with tech words like big data, gamification, hashtag, selfie and tweep predominating. Meanwhile, across the pond, Collins is crowdsourcing the choice of a new word for its latest dictionary edition, allowing people to tweet their favorites from such choices as adorkable, duckface, and fracktivist. Read the Merriam-Webster announcement here and the Collins announcement here.

  8. Word Count

     Don't Let Your Modifiers Dangle!
    Mon May 19 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    In English, modifiers go next to the thing they modify. Dangling and misplaced modifiers are challenging because they can be difficult to spot. Often the meaning is clear enough that readers pass right over them. That doesn't mean, of course, that we shouldn't fix them.

  9. Candlepower

     The Slogans That Never Sleep: How to Brand a City
    Fri May 16 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    In mid-March the convention and visitors' bureau for Cleveland, Ohio, unveiled a new branding campaign for the city of about 400,000. The campaign, developed after "years of research" and many focus groups, had a theme, a logo, a website, and a hashtag. What it didn't have, the bureau insisted, was a slogan.

  10. Blog Excerpts

     Anatomy of a Hashtag: How "#Blessed" Took Over Twitter
    Wed May 14 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    On Twitter, the single word "blessed" has been pressed into service as a popular hashtag, often appended to self-serving portrayals of enviable lifestyles. The overuse of "#blessed" has led to a backlash against the hashtag, and now it frequently appears in tweets sarcastically. Has "#blessed" run its course? Our own Ben Zimmer joined in a discussion about the shelf-life of hashtags on Huffington Post Live.
57 58 59 60 61 Displaying 581-590 of 3488 Results