When renowned education writers Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey are not presenting at prominent ed conferences across the country, they are putting their innovative ideas to work back in their San Diego high school and college classrooms. In this excerpt from their fantastic book on teaching academic vocabulary across the disciplines, Word Wise and Content Rich, Fisher and Frey encourage teachers to use paint chips to get students to recognize that words — just like similar shades of paint — can be arranged in a continuum.  Continue reading...

Last month a usage dispute broke out in the comments section here on the Visual Thesaurus. Our "Evasive Maneuvers" columnist Mark Peters described a friend who "started feeling nauseous." Two commenters objected to this use of nauseous, saying that the word properly describes someone or something that is sickening, and that the word Mark should have used is nauseated. Who's right?  Continue reading...

As the only euphemism columnist in America, it is my sacred duty to help euphemisms swim and purr to their greatest potential, lest Darwinian forces maul them prematurely.  Continue reading...

A word wall is pretty much what it sounds like — a classroom wall reserved for a word display. Most teachers associate word walls with emergent readers, but word walls are no longer just the stuff of elementary schools. Word walls can be used effectively to help students at all levels to learn vocabulary.  Continue reading...

Some recent cases of American dialect creep raised hackles among readers of a British newspaper; we examine the phenomenon this month in the Lounge.  Continue reading...

With this year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament just around the corner, there is no better time to consider that peculiar, vowel-heavy brand of English known as "crosswordese." Think you're a first-rate cruciverbalist? Quick: can you tell an anoa from an unau?  Continue reading...