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Contest
The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: March Edition
Fri Mar 28 00:00:00 EDT 2014
With the NCAA Basketball Tournament heating up, we've got an appropriately themed crossword. Solve it and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!
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Behind the Dictionary
"Bae" Watch: The Ascent of a New Pet Name
Thu Mar 27 00:00:00 EDT 2014
Having associated the interjection boo with ghosts since childhood, it took me a while to get used to it as a term of endearment for one's (presumably living) significant other. However, it's been around long enough by now that some of you may well have grown up with it. But never mind boo: it's time to get ready for bae, the latest monosyllabic pet name starting with B.
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Blog Excerpts
"Language Junkies" Go the Sesquipedalian Route
Wed Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2014
Is it possible to take vocabulary expansion too far? In a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Bernstein points out the situations where word-knowledge can work against you, making the point that "language junkies" might want to be careful lest they alienate people they're trying to impress, or just render themselves incomprehensible.
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Word Count
Word Tasting Note: "Varmint"
Tue Mar 25 00:00:00 EDT 2014
We all know what a varmint is, thanks to Yosemite Sam (and others). It's an annoying animal (or person), the fauna equivalent of a weed. It's something (or someone) who takes your nice, tidy set-up, your lovely garden or lawn or your livestock, and makes a mess of it. Before you had a good environment; now you have a nasty varmint.
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Blog Excerpts
Celebrating 175 Years of "OK," America's Greatest Export
Mon Mar 24 00:00:00 EDT 2014
Yesterday, March 23, 2014, marked the 175th anniversary of a word that may be the most widely used expression in the world: "OK." MacMurray College English professor Allan Metcalf says "OK" is America's greatest export and debunks the various origin theories surrounding it.
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Blog Excerpts
"Over" Reaction: Copy Editors Gasp at AP Ruling on "Over"/"More Than"
Fri Mar 21 00:00:00 EDT 2014
From the annual meeting of the American Copy Editors Society in Las Vegas comes some earth-shaking news: the folks who edit the Associated Press Stylebook have loosened the distinction between "over" and "more than." The stylebook editors announced that they are now fine with "over" being used with numbers. Many of those in attendance were aghast, while others hailed the change as long overdue.
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Blog Excerpts
For National Reading Month, Finding Vocabulary All Around Us
Thu Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2014
March is National Reading Month, and to commemorate the occasion, Time's Katy Steinmetz points to some great writing in small packages. She also checks in with our sister site, Vocabulary.com, for insights into vocabulary items in the texts she has chosen.
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Behind the Dictionary
Is Your Bestie Sciencey? Celebrating the Cutesiest Suffix
Wed Mar 19 00:00:00 EDT 2014
The Oxford English Dictionary's recent quarterly update added, as usual, as assortment of terms from all over the map. These included ethnomathematics, honky-tonker, honor code, exfoliator, bookaholic, over-under, wackadoo, and the even wackier wackadoodle. But the entry that really caught my eye was bestie, an affectionate term for a best friend.
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Candlepower
The X Factor
Mon Mar 17 00:00:00 EDT 2014
In February, Nokia announced a new hybrid device called Nokia X. No, the name is not a generic placeholder until something catchier comes along. It's the official name of the phone. Mysterious and austere, simple yet highly symbolic, the name is representative of a dominant branding trend of our era. In nearly every category of commerce, X marks the spot.
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Teachers at Work
The Problem with Punctuation: Some Classroom Findings
Fri Mar 14 00:00:00 EDT 2014
In a previous column, "The Problem with Punctuation," I told you I'd report back my findings on teaching grammar and punctuation a little differently. Now I have some findings and thoughts I can share.
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