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  1. Word Routes

     Tag, You're It! "Hashtag" Wins as 2012 Word of the Year
    Sat Jan 05 00:00:00 EST 2013
    The American Dialect Society has selected its Word of the Year for 2012, and the winner was a bit of a surprise. It wasn't fiscal cliff, the ubiquitous term in the news from Capitol Hill. And it wasn't YOLO, the youthful acronym for "You Only Live Once" that quickly rose (and just as quickly fell) this past year. No, the ultimate champion was that mainstay of the Twittersphere, hashtag.

  2. Word Routes

     Presenting the Nominees for the 2012 Word of the Year
    Fri Jan 04 00:00:00 EST 2013
    At the American Dialect Society's annual conference in Boston, we took a break from paper presentations to select nominations for the Word of the Year. As chair of the New Words Committee, I presided over the nominating session on Thursday. 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. Wordshop

     For the New Year: Five Simple Vocabulary Resolutions for Educators
    Thu Jan 03 00:00:00 EST 2013
    The bad news: SAT reading scores have reached an all-time low, and recently released NAEP scores reveal that American students' vocabulary growth is "flat." The good news: It's no longer 2012. It's 2013, a new year, a time to buy gym memberships and to overhaul your vocabulary instruction. Just do it.

  4. Evasive Maneuvers

     2012 Meets Mr. Mayhem
    Wed Jan 02 00:00:00 EST 2013
    2012, the year of the Mayan non-pocalypse, has passed away, joined the heavenly choir, bit the big one, bought the farm, joined the heavenly choir, taken a dirt nap, joined the majority, and croaked. Let's bury it with terms of an appropriate nature: euphemisms for death.

  5. Language Lounge

     Lexical Arm-Twisting
    Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2013
    Arm-twisting is a means of inducing cooperation through pressure. Words do it too — in the case of words, it is peer pressure that induces cooperation, and the pressure on a word is to express a meaning that the word's companions make compulsory.

  6. Contest

     The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: December Edition
    Fri Dec 28 00:00:00 EST 2012
    As 2012 draws to a close, we're celebrating with a New Year's-themed crossword. Figure it out and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!

  7. Word Routes

     "The Whole Nine Yards" Hits the Big Time
    Thu Dec 27 00:00:00 EST 2012
    How often do you see an article about the search for the origin of a phrase on the homepage of the New York Times website? Just about... never. And yet the Times today has a story about the history of an expression that we've delved into a couple of times in this space: "the whole nine yards." Diligent word-sleuthing has turned up a rather unexpected predecessor: "the whole six yards."

  8. Word Count

     Word Tasting Note: "Lagniappe"
    Wed Dec 26 00:00:00 EST 2012
    In his latest Word Tasting Note, James Harbeck presents a baker's dozen of reasons why he likes lagniappe, a word meaning "a small gift, especially one given by a merchant to a customer who makes a purchase."

  9. Blog Excerpts

     Does Santa Have a Gender Issue?
    Tue Dec 25 00:00:00 EST 2012
    "Santa Claus is male, so why isn't he Saint instead of Santa? Does he have a gender issue?" On the Grammarphobia blog, Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman answer that holiday question by looking at how "Santa Claus" entered American English from Dutch. Read their explanation here.

  10. Blog Excerpts

     A Christmas Potpourri
    Mon Dec 24 00:00:00 EST 2012
    If you're looking for some reading material this Yuletide season in between sips of eggnog, check out some Visual Thesaurus articles from Christmases past. Merrill Perlman explained the history of some seasonal expressions. Mike Pope considered phrases popularized by Christmas movies. Nancy Friedman told us about made-up holidays. And Ben Zimmer revealed the origins of "eggnog," holiday grog.
96 97 98 99 100 Displaying 971-980 of 3488 Results