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  1. Word Routes

     "Because" Wins 2013 Word of the Year Vote, Because Awesome
    Sat Jan 04 00:00:00 EST 2014
    Leading up to the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year vote last night, handicappers might have favored such terms as selfie, twerk, or Obamacare as possible winners. But the society's selection was a bit of a surprise: the humble word because, which has recently expanded in new grammatical directions in informal use online.

  2. Word Routes

     Presenting the Nominees for 2013 Word of the Year
    Fri Jan 03 00:00:00 EST 2014
    At the American Dialect Society's annual conference in Minneapolis, we have nominated words in various categories in our Word of the Year selection. I presided over the nominating session on Thursday in my capacity as chair of the society's New Words Committee. Winners will be selected from the different categories on Friday evening, culminating in the vote for the overall Word of the Year. Here's the list of nominees.

  3. Language Lounge

     Fiddle-Faddle! The Delight of Reduplication
    Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2014
    Years ago, when the furniture in the Language Lounge was still spick-and-span, I wrote a column about reduplication. Not a day has passed since then that I did not use, hear, and delight in one or more reduplicative words; they constitute a reliable source of infotainment in English, and no speaker's lexicon can or should be without a ready supply.

  4. Word Routes

     The Year in Words, 2013 Edition
    Mon Dec 30 00:00:00 EST 2013
    As the year comes to a close, it's time once again to survey the new words and phrases that made their presence felt in the popular consciousness. For the Wall Street Journal, I surveyed the "words that popped in 2013," from cronut to Sharknado, but there were too many good choices to include in one article. Here I present my more comprehensive list of notable words of the year.

  5. Contest

     The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: December Edition
    Fri Dec 27 00:00:00 EST 2013
    As 2013 comes to a close, we have a crossword for you full of things that celebrated 100th anniversaries this year. Solve it and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!

  6. Blog Excerpts

     Clearing Up Christmas Carol Confusions
    Wed Dec 25 00:00:00 EST 2013
    Christmas songs: On city sidewalks and every street corner... from Black Friday through New Year's... they're broadcast inside and out, they stick in our heads, they are parodied and rewritten, and yet many of us, even as we sing along, don't give much thought to what the words mean.

  7. Word Count

     Dennis Baron's Word of the Year for 2013: "Marriage"
    Tue Dec 24 00:00:00 EST 2013
    It's that time of year when everyone is making their case for the Word of the Year. For Dennis Baron, English professor at the University of Illinois and author of the blog The Web of Language, the word of 2013 is none other than marriage.

  8. Word Count

     When a Word Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means
    Mon Dec 23 00:00:00 EST 2013
    In a comical scene in the film The Princess Bride, the character Inigo Montoya has finally had enough of hearing the bad guy Vizzini say "Inconceivable!" when things are not only conceivable, but just keep happening. Montoya is finally moved to say, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

  9. Dog Eared

     The Crossword Revolution
    Fri Dec 20 00:00:00 EST 2013
    Dec. 21, 2013 marks the hundredth anniversary of the crossword puzzle. But the crossword has come a long way since Arthur Wynne's first creation for The New York World. In a lively new book entitled The Curious History of the Crossword, Ben Tausig, himself a noted constructor and editor of crosswords, argues that the day Will Shortz took over the New York Times crossword 20 years ago marked a watershed moment in the puzzle's history.

  10. Word Count

     Electrocution: A Shocking Misuse?
    Thu Dec 19 00:00:00 EST 2013
    Many people complain about the use of elecrocute to mean "to shock non-lethally." But as with most usage complaints, it's not that simple. The argument is that electrocute only means "to kill with electricity," not "to shock with electricity." The purists have etymology on their side — but only to a degree.
67 68 69 70 71 Displaying 681-690 of 3488 Results