aaal - American Association for Applied Linguistics

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Differences Between American and British English

By Kenneth Beare

While there are certainly many more varieties of English, American and British English are the two varieties that are taught in most ESL/EFL programs. Generally, it is agreed that no one version is "correct" however, there are certainly preferences in use. The most important rule of thumb is to try to be consistent in your usage. If you decide that you want to use American English spellings then be consistent in your spelling (i.e. The color of the orange is also its flavour - color is American spelling and flavour is British), this is of course not always easy - or possible. The following guide is meant to point out the principal differences between these two varieties of English.
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Dr. Goodword
Basics of Language Study

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• •Why We Have to Pay Syntax (Syntax 2) - More evidence that sentences have their own rules of order distinct from those of semantics.
• •But There are no Such Things as Words! (Morphology 1) - Evidence showing that we do not use words but parts of words when we speak!
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• •NEW STUFF! Linguistics Glossary for the Good Words
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• •Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary - The best American tongue-in-cheek dictionary.
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• ?Newest additions to our American Slang database.
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• •NEW! False Friend Riddles. Riddles made up of English sentences that contain a foreign word spelled identical to an English word. Define the foreign word to build your vocabulary and learn the major false friends (false cognates) of the language:
• ?French False Friend Riddles (Faux Amis)
• ?German False Friend Riddles (Falsche Freunde)
• ?Spanish False Friend Riddles (Falsos Amigos)
• •The Rebel-Yankee Test - How much of a Rebel/Yankee are you? Take our quiz and we will tell you.
• •The Advanced Rebel-Yankee Test - Did you pass the Rebel-Yankee test? Then you are ready for the advanced test.
• •Miss Spelling's Multiple Choice Spelling Bee - This one covers all 100 of the most often misspelled words in a tricky multiple-choice quiz.
• •NEW! Miss Spelling's Real Time Spelling Bee - This spelling bee is just like a real one: you hear the word, spell it, and are then told if you were right or wrong.
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• ?Commonly Confused Words on A
• ?Commonly Confused Words on B
• ?Commonly Confused Words on C
• ?Commonly Confused Words on DE
• ?Commonly Confused Words on F
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• •Miss Spelling's Often Misspelled Words Quiz - An easy fill-in-the-blank spelling quiz that Miss Spelling created to warm you up for the Spelling Bee.

• •NEW! Split Infinitives - Do you suffer from split infinitives? Then you have come to the right doctor. Doctor Goodword has just the right medicine to fix your problem.
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• •Top 10 Words of 2000 (yourDictionary)

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• •The Most Often Misspelled Words in English
• •Questions about English Grammar and Style (with Answers)

• 1.Fickle Ns and Ses
• 2.What's the third English word that ends in -gry?
• 3.What's the longest place name in the world?
• 4.What's the longest word in the English language?
• 5.What does "antidisestablishmentarianism" mean?
• 6.How do I say [a common phrase] in language X?
• 7.I need a boy's/girl's name in language X.
• 8.What does this name mean?
• 9.I have something in mind but can't think of the word for it.
• 10.Is it "judgment" or "judgement"?
• 11.Are "imply" and "infer" synonyms?
• 12.What is the difference between "its" and "it's?"
• 13.What is the difference betweem "may" and "can?"
• 14.What is the difference between "there" and "their?"
• 15.What is onomatopoeia?
• 17.What is an eponym?
• 18.What is an acronym?
• 20.What is a thesaurus?
• 21.What is PIE?
• 22.What does the suffix -stan mean in words like "Afghanistan?"
• 23.What does 'kumbaya' in the song, "Kumbaya, my Lord" mean?
• 24.What is the difference between sit/set and lie/lay?
• 25.Will I go to jail if I end a sentence with a preposition?
• 26.When should I say "X and I" and when "X and me?"
• 27.How can I help stomp out the use of "ain't?"
• 28.How many words are in English?

Amtssprache von US
Amtssprache von Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika

• Englisch
• Hawaiianisch, auf Hawaii (mit Englisch)
• Spanisch, im Bundesstaat Neu-Mexiko (zusammen mit Englisch)

• Alabama (1990)
• Alaska (1998)
• Arizona (-, das entsprechende Gesetz von Arizona (von 1988) wurde 1998 gerichtlich annulliert)
• Arkansas (1987)
• California (1986)
• Colorado (1988)
• Florida (1988)
• Georgia (1996)
• Hawaii, Englisch zusammen mit Hawaiianisch
• Illinois (1969)
• Indiana (1984)
• Iowa (2002)
• Kalifornien (1986)
• Kentucky (1984)
• Louisiana (1811)
• Massachusetts (1975)
• Mississippi (1987)
• Missouri (1998)
• Montana (1995)
• Nebraska (1920)
• New Hampshire (1995)
• New Mexico, Englisch zusammen mit Spanisch
• North Carolina (1987)
• North Dakota (1987)
• South Carolina (1987)
• South Dakota (1995)
• Tennessee (1984)
• Utah (2000)
• Virginia (1996)
• Wyoming (1996)

bartleby068
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English

• All
• English Usage
• Modern Usage
• American English
• Strunk's Style
• Fowler's King's English

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Bibliography
• Bibliographic Record

Entry Index

• a to affection
• affidavit to annex
• anniversary to at long last
• atop to benedict
• benefactor to broach
• broad to cession
• chaff to COMPOUND SUBJECTS
• comprehend to -d-
• d’ to devil’s advocate
• devise to DOUBLE HYPHEN
• double in brass to end up
• enervate to eyrie
• -f to for free
• forget to go somebody (them) one better
• got to histrionics
• hit to include
• INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE to introduction
• intrude to lease
• leastways to materialize
• materiel to mysterious
• mystery to obtain
• paperback to picture
• picturesque to professor
• proficient to real facts
• realistic to rooftop
• root to serendipity
• serial to someway
• somewhat to SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD
• submarine to the fact is
• their to under-
• underground to VOCABULARY 3: SIZE
• vocal chords to Xanadu

anniversary | anno Domini | annoint | annoyed | annual, perennial | annunciate, enunciate, annunciation, enunciation | anodyne | anoint, annoint | anorexia, anorexia nervosa, anorexic, anorectic | another, additional, more | an't, a'n't | antagonist, protagonist | ante-, anti- | ANTECEDENT 1 | antecedent 2 | antelope | antenna | anterior | anthropomorphism | anti- | anticipate | ANTICIPATORY SUBJECTS | antidote | antipathy | antique | anti-Semitic | antiseptic, aseptic | antisocial, asocial, nonsocial, unsociable, unsocial | ANTONYM | anxious, eager | any | any and all | anybody, anyone | anymore, any more | any number of | anyone | any other | anyplace, everyplace, noplace, someplace | anytime | anyway, anyways | anywhere, anywheres | apart from | apathy, apathetic | ape, to go | apex | APHERESIS | APHESIS, APHETIC | aphorism, (old) adage, apothegm, maxim, proverb, (old) saw, saying | apiary, aviary | apiece | aplomb | APOCOPE | apologize, apologise | apophthegm | a posteriori, a priori | APOSTROPHE 1 | APOSTROPHE 2 | apothegm | apparatus | apparently, evidently | append | appendix | applicable | apportion | APPOSITIVE, APPOSITION | APPOSITIVE GENITIVE | appraise, apprise | appreciate | apprehend | apprehensive | apprise | APPROPRIATENESS, THE DOCTRINE OF | approve | approximate | approximately | approximation | a priori | apropos | apt, calculated, liable, likely, prone | aqueduct, aqualung, aquamarine, aquarium, aquatic, aquatint, aqueous | Arab, Arabian, Arabic | arbiter, arbitrator | arbitrate, adjudicate, mediate | arbitrator | arbor, arbour | arch-, arche-, archi- | archaeology, archeology | ARCHAIC, ARCHAISM | archipelago | archive | Arctic, arctics | ardor, ardour | area, field, province, realm, sphere | aren't I | ARGOT | arguably, arguable | arise | aristocratic, aristocrat | armada | armor, armour | aroma | around 1, about | around 2, round | arouse, rouse | arpeggio | arrant | array | arithmetic progression | arrive 1 | arrive 2, depart | arrogate | arse | art 1, arts, fine arts, liberal arts | art 2, state of the | artefact | artful, artistic, artsy-craftsy, arty, arty-crafty | arthritis | ARTICLES | artifact, artefact | artificial, counterfeit, ersatz, fake, false, imitation, sham, spurious, substitute, synthetic | ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE | artisan, artist | artist, artiste | artistic | artless | art object | arts and sciences | artsy-craftsy, arty, arty-crafty | ary (not), nary | as 1 | as 2 | as 3 | as … as, so … as | as bad or worse than | as best | ascendancy, ascendency, ascendant, ascendent | ascent, assent | ascertain | aseptic | as far as, so far as | as follows | as for, as to | as good as | as good or better than, as great or greater than | as how | Asian, Asiatic, Oriental | aside from | as if, as though | as is | ask | as long as, so long as | as much or more than | asocial | as of | ASPECT 1 | aspect 2 | as per | aspirant | aspiration | aspire | as regards | ass | assassin, murderer | assassinate | | assemble | ASSEMBLY OR ASSEMBLAGE, NOUNS OF | assent | assertive | assignment, assignation | assimilate | ASSIMILATION | assist | associate | ASSONANCE | as such | assume, presume | assurance | assure | astern | as the saying goes | asthma, asthmatic | as though | as to | astonished | as to whether, as to how, as to which, as to who(m), as to why | astronaut, cosmonaut | astronomical | as well as | at | at about | ate | at hand | atheist, atheistic | athlete, athletics, athletic | at home | at long last

atop | attain | attempt | attend | at this point in time | attitude | attorney, attorney-at-law | attorney general | ATTRACTION | ATTRIBUTIVE ADJECTIVES | ATTRIBUTIVE GENITIVES | attrit, attrite | at variance | au contraire | au courant | audible | audience, hearers, listeners, readers, spectators, viewers | au fait | au fond, à fond | auger, augur | aught | augment | augur | augury | au naturel | aunt | au pair, au pair girl | aural, oral | auspice, augury | auspicious | AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH | aut- | authentic, genuine | author | authoress | authoritarian, authoritative | authority | auto-, aut-, auto | automaton | autumn, fall, autumnal, fall | AUXILIARIES, AUXILIARY VERBS | avail | avant-garde, cutting edge, leading edge, van, vanguard | avenge, revenge, vengeance | aver | average | averse | aversion | avert | aviary | avid | avocation, vocation | avoid | avuncular | await | awake, awaken | aware | awash | away, way | awesome, awesomely | awful, awfully | awhile, a while | ax, axe | axis | aye, ay | -b-, -bb- | babe | BABY TALK | bachelor, bachelor girl, bachelor's degree | bacillus | back | BACK-FORMATION | background | backgrounder | backlash | backlog | back of, in back of, in back | backpack, rucksack | backside | back slash, backslash | backward, backwards | back yard, backyard | bacteria | bad, badly, bad(ly) off | BAD GRAMMAR | bade | badmouth | bag 1 | bag 2, poke, sack | baggage, luggage | bail, bale | bait, bate | balance 1 | balance 2, on | BALANCE, BALANCED | bald, balding | bale | baleful, baneful | balk, balk, balk at, balky | ballad, ballade | ball game, a whole new | ball's in your court, the | balmy, barmy | baloney | baluster, balustrade, banister, bannister, railing | banal, banality | band, combo, ensemble, group, orchestra | bandit | bandwagon | bane | baneful | banger | banister, bannister | banjo | bank of a river, the left, the right | banquet | banshee | Bantu | baptismal name | bar | barbarian, barbaric, barbarous, barbarism, barbarity, barbarousness | BARBARISMS | barbecue | barber | barbiturate | bare, bear | barely | bargain | bark, barque | barmy | barque | barrage | barring | barrio | barrister | bar sinister, bend sinister | basal | base | baseball, the language of | based | based on, based upon | bases | basic 1, basal | | basically, basicly | basinet | basis, on the basis of, on a basis of, on a … basis | basketball, the language of | bass, base | bassinet, basinet | | bate | bathos, pathos, bathetic, pathetic | bathroom, go to the bathroom | baton, batten | bay window, bow window | bazaar, bizarre | -bb- | B.C., B.C.E. | be | bear | bear, bull, bearish, bullish | beastly | beat | beau | beauteous, beautiful | beauty | because | because of | beck | become | become of | been | before | beg | begin | beg the question | behalf, behoof, in behalf of, in behoof of, on behalf of | behavior, behaviour | behest, request | beholden to | behoof | behoove, behove | beige | being, being as, being as how, being that | belabor, belabour, labor, labour | belie | believe, feel, think | belittle | bells | bellwether | belly | beloved | below | BELT AND SUSPENDERS CONSTRUCTION | bemuse | bend sinister | benedict

benefactor, beneficiary | benign, benignant, malign, malignant | benny | benzine, benzene | bereave | Berkeley | beseech | beside, besides | bespeak | bespoke | best, had best | best foot forward, put your | bestir | bestow | be sure and | bet | betake oneself | bête noire | betray | better | better | better, had better | better part of, the | better than | better than I, better than me | bettor, better | between, among | between a rock and a hard place | between each, between every | between-maid, tweeny | between you and I, between he and his mother | betwixt, betwixt and between | bi-, semi- | biannual, biennial, semiannual | bias | Bible, bible, biblical | bicentenary, bicentennial | biceps, triceps | bid | bide | biennial | bight, bite, byte | bigness | big of a deal, (not) that | | bilk | billet doux | BILLINGSGATE | billion | bimonthly | biodegradable | bipartisan | birth, birthing | birthday suit, in one's | bisect, dissect | bison | bit | bitch, bitchy | bitch goddess | bite | bitter cold, bitterly cold | bitter end | bivalve | bivouac | biweekly | bizarre | black 1 | black 2, blacken | BLACK ENGLISH | black humor | blackout | blame 1 | blame 2 | blanch, blench | blasé | blatant, flagrant | blaze, blazon | bleeding | blench | blend | BLENDS | BLENDS, SYNTACTIC | blind | BLIND AGREEMENT | blink | blithe, blithesome | blizzard | bloc, block | blond, blonde | blood | blood money | bloody | blooming | blow | blue book, bluebook | blue-collar, white-collar | blue law | blush, flush | boast | boat | boater | boatswain, bosun | bobby | bobby pin | bodacious | bodega | body, dead | BODY ENGLISH | BODY LANGUAGE | boffin | bogey, bogy, bogie | boggle, mind-boggling | bogie, bogy | bogus titles | Bohemian, bohemian | Bologna, bologna, baloney, boloney | bomb | | bonkers | bonk (on the head) | bonnyclabber | bonus | boob | booboisie | boob(s) | boogie-woogie | boon | boondocks, boondockers, boonies | boondoggle | boonies | boost, booster | boot | borax | border | born, borne | born-again | borrow | bosom | boss | bosun | both | bottleneck | bottom | bottom line | boughten | bouillabaisse | bound and determined | boundary | bounden | bourgeois, bourgeoisie | boutique | bow window | boy | boyfriend | boyish, girlish | bracero | BRACES | braces | bracket | BRACKETS (SQUARE, ANGLE) | brae | brag | brain 1 | brain 2, brains | branch | brand | brand-new | brass | brass | brass tacks | bravado, bravery, bravura | brave | bravery, bravura | breach, breech | bread | breakdown, break down | breakthrough, break through | breakup, break up | breast(s), boob(s), bosom(s), bust, chest, tit(s) | breech, breeches | brethren, brothers | BREVE | BREVITY, CONCISENESS, CONCISION, TERSENESS | briar, brier | brickbat | bridegroom | brier | bright | bring 1 | bring 2, fetch | bring 3, take | bring up | Brit | Britain, British Isles, England, Great Britain, (the) U.K., (the) United Kingdom | britches | BRITISH AND AMERICAN DIFFERENCES IN MEANING, PRONUNCIATION, SPELLING, AND VOCABULARY | BRITISH ENGLISH | British (the), Brit, Britisher, Briton, (the) English | Briton | broach, brooch

broad | broadcast | broke, broken | brolly | brooch | brook | brother-in-law | brothers | brown bag, brown bagging, brown bagger, brown-bag | brownnose, brownnoser | brownout, blackout | browse, graze | brunet, brunette | brusque, brusk | buck | buckaroo, buckeroo | buff, in the buff | buffalo, bison | buffet | bug | bugger | bulimia, bulimic | bulk | bull, bullish | bum | bumble-bee, humble-bee | bummer | bunch | bungalow | bunk into | buns | bureau | bureaucrat, bureaucracy, bureaucratic | burgeon, burgeoning | burger | -burgh, -burg | burglarize, burgle | burglary, robbery | burgle | buried | burlesque, farce, lampoon, parody, travesty | burn | burn out, burnout, burn-out, burned-out, burnt-out | burst | bury, buried, -bury | bus, buss, bus boy, busboy, bus | bush, bush league | bushwa, bushwah | business | buss | bust 1 | bust 2 | busyness, business | but | buttle | buttocks, arse, ass, backside, bottom, bum, buns, butt, can, cheeks, rear (end), rump | but which, but who | buy | BUZZWORD | by- | by | by all means | by and by, by and large, by the by, by the way, bye-bye, bye | by heart, by rote | byte | by the by | by the same token | by the way | by way of being | Byzantine, byzantine, Byzantium | cabaña | cabaret | cabernet sauvignon | cablecast | cacao, coca, coco, cocoa | cache | cactus | caddie, caddy | caesarean, caesarian | cagey | Cajun | calculate, calculated, calculating | calculus | caldron, cauldron | calendar, calender | caliber, calibre | calk, caulk | calligraphy | callous, callus, calloused, callused | Calvary | camp, campy | can | can 1, may | can 2, tin, canned, tinned | canard | can but | cancel out | candelabrum, chandelier | canine | cannibalize | cannon, canon | cannot, can not, can't | cannot help but, can but, cannot but, cannot help, cannot choose but, can't but, can't help, can't help but | canon | cañon | CANT | can't | can't but | can't hardly | can't help, can't help but | can't seem | Canuck | canvas, canvass | canyon, cañon | capable, capability | capacity | capital, capitol | CAPITAL LETTERS, CAPITALIZATION | capital punishment, corporal punishment | CAPITALS, CAPITAL LETTERS, CAPITALIZATION | capitol | carat, caret, carrot, karat | carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide | carburetor, carburettor | cardinal number | care | careen, career | careful, carefree, careless | CAREFUL WRITER, GOOD WRITER, THOUGHTFUL WRITER | care less | careless | caret | carillon | caring | carousal, carousel, carrousel | carrot | carrousel | CASE 1 | case 2 | casket, coffin | cast, caste | caster, castor | CASUAL SPEECH | casualty | | cataclysm, catastrophe | catacomb, catafalque, cenotaph | catalog, catalogue | catalyst | catastrophe | catch | catchup | categorical, categorically | category | cater | cater-corner(ed) | catholic, Catholic | catsup | catty-corner(ed) | Caucasian, Caucasoid | cauldron | caulk | CAUSAL AS | cause | caution | cavalry, Calvary | cay | C.E. | -ce, -cy | -cede, -ceed, -sede | CEDILLA | -ceed | ceiling, floor | celebrant, celebrator | cello | Celsius, centigrade | Celt, Celtic | cement, concrete, mortar | cenotaph | censure, censor, censer | centennial, centenary | center 1 | center 2, centre | centigrade | centimeter | centre | centrifugal, centripetal | centrist | century | cereal, serial | cerebral | ceremonial, ceremonious | certain | certainly | certificated, certified, licensed | cesarean, caesarean, caesarian | cession, session

chaff, chafe | chain reaction | chair | chairman, chairlady, chairperson, chairwoman | chaise longue, chaise lounge | champagne, champaign | chance | chancel, chantry, choir | chancery, chancellery, chancellory | chandelier | CHANGE, LINGUISTIC | CHANGE, SEMANTIC | CHANGE AND VARIATION IN LANGUAGE | chantry | chaperon, chaperone | character, nature | characteristic | charged with (by) | charisma, charismatic | chary | chastened | chastise | château, chateau | chauvinism, chauvinist, chauvinistic | cheap, cheaply | check 1 | check 2, cheque | checkers | cheeks | cheerful, cheery | chemistry | cheque | cherub, cherubim, cherubs | chest | chesterfield | Chicano | chide | chief justice | childish, childlike | chili, chile, chilli | Chinaman, chinaman | chintzy | choice | CHOICE ENGLISH | choir, quire | chord, cord | Christian name | chronic | chukker | chutzpah, chutzpa | -ciate, -ciation, -tiate, -tiation | cipher, cypher | circle | CIRCUMFLEX | CIRCUMLOCUTION | circumstances | cite, site, sight | citizen | civilian | clad | claim | clandestine | clang | CLASS DIALECT | classic, classical | CLASSIFYING GENITIVE | CLAUSE | CLAUSE MODIFIERS | clean 1, cleanly | clean 2, cleanse, cleaner, cleanser | cleanly, cleanliness | clean room | cleanse, cleanser | clear 1 | clear 2, clearly | cleave | clench, clinch | clergyman | clever | clew | CLICHE | client, customer, patron | climactic, climatic, climacteric | clinch | cling, clang | CLIPPING, CLIPPED FORMS, CLIPPED WORDS | clique | clone | close proximity | closure | clothes | cloture, closure | club soda | clue, clew | co- | coalesce | coal oil | coarse, course | COASTAL NEW ENGLAND DIALECT | coca | cockamamie | cock a snook (at) | coco, cocoa | coed, co-ed | coequal | coffin | cognate | cohere, coherence | COHERENCE | cohesion, cohesive | cohort | coiffeur, coiffeuse, coiffure, barber, hairdresser | coined titles | col- | cola, COLA | cold slaw, coleslaw, cole slaw | coliseum, Colosseum | collaborate | collaborator, collaborationist | COLLECTIVE NOUNS | collide, collision | COLLOQUIAL, COLLOQUIALISM | collude, collusion | COLON | colored, of color | Colosseum | com- | coma, comma | comatose | combine | COMBINED FORMS: PREPOSITIONS AND ADVERBS COMBINED WITH VERBS | combo | come | come and | comfort, comforter | comic, comical | COMMA 1 | COMMA 2, INVERTED | COMMA FAULT, COMMA BLUNDER, COMMA ERROR, COMMA SPLICE | COMMA FOR CLARITY | COMMA SPLICE | COMMAND | commander, commandant, commando | commence | commend | commensurate | commentate | commiserate | commitment | committee | common | commonality, commonalty | COMMON ENGLISH | COMMON NOUNS | common sense, common-sense, commonsense | commune | communicate, communication | commute, commuter, commutation | comparable | COMPARATIVE, COMPARATIVE DEGREE | comparatively | compare, contrast | compare to, compare with | COMPARISON | COMPARISON, ILLOGICAL | COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES | COMPARISON OF ADVERBS | compass, a pair of compasses | compatible | compel, impel | compendious | compendium | competence, competency | complacence, complacency | complacent, complaisant, compliant | complaint | complaisant | compleat | complected, complexioned | complement, compliment | complementary, complimentary | COMPLEMENTS | complete, completely, wholly | complex | complexioned | COMPLEX SENTENCE | compliance | compliant | compliment | complimentary | comply | compose | COMPOUND-COMPLEX SENTENCE | COMPOUND PREPOSITIONS | COMPOUNDS, COMPOUNDING | COMPOUND SENTENCE | COMPOUND SUBJECTS, AGREEMENT WITH VERBS

comprehend, apprehend | comprehensive, complete, comprehensible | comprise, compose, consist, constitute, include | comptroller, controller | compulsive, compulsory | COMPUTERESE | con- | concave, convex | concensus | concept, conception | concern | concerned | concert, recital | concerto | CONCISENESS 1, CONCISION | conciseness 2, concision | conclave | conclude | concoct | CONCORD | CONCORD, NOTIONAL | concrete | concretize | concur | condemn, contemn | condensation | condition | CONDITIONALS | conducive | conductor | conduit | conferencing | confess | confidant, confidante, confident | confide | confident | conform | conformity | CONFUSION OF SIMILAR OR APPARENTLY SIMILAR WORDS | confute, refute | congenial, genial | congenital | congratulate, congratulation(s) | congruence, congruent | conjugal, connubial | CONJUNCTION | CONJUNCTIVE ADVERBS | connect | connection, connexion | connote, denote | connubial | consciousness, conscience, consciousness raising, consciousness-raising | consensus (of opinion) | consequent | consequential, inconsequential | conservative | CONSERVATIVES IN LANGUAGE MATTERS | CONSERVATIVE USAGE | consider | considerable | considerateness, consideration | consist | consistent | consistently, persistently | consist in, consist of | CONSONANCE | consonant | CONSONANTS 1, THE AMERICAN ENGLISH | CONSONANTS 2, DOUBLING OF | conspicuous by its | CONSTITUENCY | constitute | constrain, restrain | consul | consummate | contact | CONTACT CLAUSES | contagious, infectious | contemn | contemporaneous, contemporary | contemptible, contemptuous | contend | CONTEXT, CONTEXTUAL, CONTEXTUALLY | continual, continuous | continually, continuously | continuance, continuation, continuity | continue on | continuity | continuous | continuously | CONTRACTIONS | contrast | controlled substance | controller | | convenient | conventional | conversant | CONVERSATIONAL | CONVERSATIONAL LEVELS | converse | convex | convict | convince, persuade | cool, coolth | cooperate, collaborate | COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS | cop, bobby | cope | cop out, cop a plea | COPULATIVE VERBS | copy | cord | core, corps | coronate | corporal, corporeal | corps | corpse, corpus, corpus delicti | correct | CORRECTNESS, THE DOCTRINE OF, AND THE DOCTRINE OF APPROPRIATENESS | correspond | corrode | cosmetic, cosmetic, cosmeticize, cosmetize | cosmonaut | cost, cost out | couch | could, might | coulda | could care less, couldn't care less | couldn't hardly | could of | council, counsel, consul | councilor, councillor, counselor(-at-law), counsellor(-at-law) | counsel | counteract | counterfeit | counterproductive | COUNTERWORDS | COUNT NOUNS | coup de grace | couple | couple of, a | course | course of, in the; during the course of | courtesy, curtsy | court martial | cover | craft 1 | craft 2 | craft paper | crape, crepe | crass | crayfish, crawdad, crawfish | crazy, like | create havoc | credence, credibility, credulity, credit, credible, creditable, credulous | creek | creep | cremains | crème de menthe | crepe | crevice, crevasse | crew | crick | cripple, crippled | criterion | criticize, criticism | critique | crow | crunch | cry | cryptic | -ction, -xion | culminate | cultivated, cultured | cum | cumulate, cumulation | cumulative | cupful | curate | curb, kerb | cured | current, currant | currently | curriculum | curtains | curtsy | customer | custom-made | cute | cut in half | cutting edge | -cy | cymbal, symbol | cynosure, sinecure | cypher | Cyprus | -d-, -dd-

d', de, di, du | dab, darb | daemon | dago | dairy, diary | dais | Dame, dame | damn, dam('), damfool, dammit, damnable, damnation, damned, damnedest, damning, etc. | dance | DANGLING ADVERB | DANGLING MODIFIERS | darb | dare | daresay, dare say | darkling | DASH | dassent, dassn't | dastard, dastardly | data, datum | date | dates | DATIVE CASE | datum | daughter-in-law | davenport | day and age, in this | day bed | daylight saving(s) time | days | de | de-, dis-, dys- | dead | dead body | deadly, deathly | DEAD METAPHORS | dead reckoning, dead center, dead right | DEADWOOD | deaf, deafened | deal | deal, (not that) big of a | | dear | dear, dearly | dearth | deathly | debacle | debar, disbar | debark, disembark | debatable | debate | debouch, debauch | debrief | debris, débris | debug | debut | debutant, debutante | deca-, dec-, deci- | decade | decadence, decadent | decease, deceased, decedent | deceitful, deceptive | decent | deceptive | deci- | decide | decided, decisive | decimate | decisive | DECLARATIVE SENTENCE | declare | déclassé, declass | decline | décolletage, décolleté | decor, décor | decorous, decent | decoy | decriminalize | decry, descry | dedicated | deduce, deduct, deduction | deductive, inductive | deem | deep, deeply | deer | de-escalate | de facto | defect, deficiency | defective, deficient | defence | defend | defenestrate | defense, defence, defense | defensible, defensive | deficiency | deficient | deficit | defile | definite, definitive, definitely, definitively | deflection, deflexion | defuse, diffuse | dégagé | DEGRADATION, DEGRADED, DEGRADING | DEGREE | degree, to a; to the nth degree | degreed | déjà vu | de jure, de facto | delectable | deleterious | deli | deliberate, deliberative | DELIBERATIVE LEVEL | delible | delimit, delimitate | deliver | deliverance, delivery | delusion, illusion | deluxe, de luxe | demand | demean 1 | demean 2 | demeanor, demeanour | demesne, domain | demi- | demise | demo | Democrat, Democratic | demon, daemon | DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS, DEMONSTRATIVES | demur, demurral, demurrer, demurrage | denominator, numerator | denote | denouement, dénouement | dent, dint | DENTAL SUFFIX | depart | depend | dependant | dependence, dependency | dependent, dependant | DEPENDENT CLAUSES | depository, depositary, repository | depot, station | deprecate, depreciate | deprecating, deprecatory, depreciatory | depreciate | depreciatory | depression, recession | deprive | derby, Derby | derelict, dereliction | de rigueur | derisive, derisory | derive | derogate, derogation | DEROGATORY TERMS | derrière | desalinate, desalinize, desalt | descendant, descendent | description | DESCRIPTIVE GENITIVE | DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR AND USAGE | descry | desegregate, integrate, segregate | desegregation, integration, segregation | desert, dessert | deshabille | desideratum | design, destine, intend | (-)designate | designed | desirable, desirous | desire | despair | despatch | desperado | despicable | despite | despoil | despondent | dessert | destine, destined | destroyed | destruct, self-destruct | destructible, indestructible | destructive | detail | detente, détente | deter, deterring, deterrent | deteriorate | determinately, determinedly | DETERMINERS | deterrent, deterrence | detour | detract, distract | develop, development | DEVERBAL OR DEVERBATIVE NOUNS | deviate, deviant | device, devise | devil's advocate

devise | deviser, devisor, divisor | devoid | devolve | dexterous, dextrous, dexterously, dexterity, dexterousness, ambidextrous, ambidextrously, ambidexterity | di | diabolic, diabolical | DIACRITICS, DIACRITICAL MARKS | diagnose | diagnosis, prognosis | DIAGONAL | diagram | dial | DIALECT | DIALECTAL, dialectical, dialectic(s) | DIALECTOLOGY, DIALECTOLOGIST | dialogue, dialog | diamond, diaper | diarrhea, diarrhoea | diary | diatribe | dice | dicey | dichotomy | dictate | DICTION | DICTIONARIES | dictum | didn't ought | didn't use to | die, dye | DIERESIS, DIAERESIS | diesel | dietetics, dietician, dietitian | differ | different, separate | different from, different than, different to | differentiate, distinguish | differently abled | different than, different to | diffuse | dig | digest | DIGRAPHS | dike, dyke | dilapidated, dilapidate | | diminuendo | diminution | dine | dinghy, dingy | dinner, supper | dint | diphtheria, diphthong, naphtha, ophthalmology | DIPHTHONG | diplomat, diplomatist, diplomate | direct, directly | DIRECT ADDRESS, DIRECT QUOTATION, INDIRECT ADDRESS, INDIRECT DISCOURSE, INDIRECT QUOTATION | DIRECT OBJECT | director | dirigible | DIRTY WORDS | dis- | disability, disabled, disadvantaged | disagree | disappointed, disappoint, disappointment | disapprove | disassemble | disassociate | disastrous | disbar | disburse, disperse | disc | discernible, discernable | disciplinary | disco, discotheque, discothèque | discombobulate | discomfit, discomfiture, discomfort, uncomfortable, uncomfortably | discontent | discotheque | discourage | discourse | DISCOURSE, INDIRECT | discover, invent | discreet, discrete | discrepancy, disparity | discrete | discriminate, discrimination | discus | discuss | discussable, discussible | disembark | disenfranchise | disfavor, disfavour | disfranchise, disenfranchise | disgruntle, disgruntled | disgusted | dishabille, deshabille | disinformation, misinformation, propaganda | disinterest, disinterestedness, uninterest | disinterested, uninterested | DISJUNCTS, ADVERBIAL | disk, disc | dislike | dismayed | disorient, disorientate | DISPARAGING LABELS | disparate | disparity | dispassionate, impassioned | dispatch, despatch | dispel | dispense, dispose | dispersal, dispersion | disperse | dispersion | displace, replace | disposal, disposition | dispose, dispose of | disposition | dispossess | disputable | dispute | disqualified | disqualify | disregard | disremember | dissatisfied, unsatisfied | dissect | dissemble, disassemble | dissension | dissent | dissertation, thesis | dissimilar | DISSIMILATION | dissimulate | dissociate, disassociate | distaff | distaste | distasteful, tasteless | distill, distil | distinct, distinctive | distinguish | distinguished, distinguishing | distract | distrait, distracted, distraught | distressed | distrust | distrustful | dive 1 | dive 2 | divergent | diverse, divers | diversion | divest | divide, divide up | DIVIDED USAGE | dividend, divisor, quotient | divide up | divisive | divisor | divorce | divorcé, divorcée | djin, djinn | do 1 | do 2, doings | dock, dry dock, graving dock, pier, wharf, dry-dock | doctor, Dr. | doctrinal | | doesn't | doff, don | dogged, dog | dog watch | doings | dolor, dolour, dolorous | dolphin, porpoise | domain | | domicile | dominate, domineer, domineering | dominie | domino | don | donate | done | donnybrook | don't, doesn't | don't let's | don't seem | don't think | donut | dope | dote | dotty | DOUBLE COMPARATIVE, DOUBLE COMPARISON | DOUBLE ENTENDRE | DOUBLE GENITIVE | DOUBLE HYPHEN

double in brass | DOUBLE MEANING, DOUBLE ENTENDRE | DOUBLE MODAL AUXILIARIES | DOUBLE NEGATIVE | DOUBLE PASSIVE | DOUBLE POSSESSIVE | DOUBLE QUOTATION MARKS | | DOUBLE SUBJECTS | DOUBLE SUPERLATIVE | DOUBLE TALK | DOUBLING | doubt | doubtful | doubtless, doubtlessly, indubitably, no doubt, undoubtedly, unquestionably, without doubt | doughnut, donut | dour | douse, dowse | dove | dower, dowry | down | down and out | downer, upper | downplay | downsize | DOWN STYLE | down the drain, down the pipe, down the tube(s) | down the pike | down the pipe, down the tube | downward, downwards | dowry | dowse | dozen | Dr. | draft, draught | drag | drank | drapes, draperies, curtains | draught(s) | drave | drawer, drawers | drawing room | dream | dreck, drek | drench | drier, dryer | drily | drink | drive | drivel | driven | drop 1 | drop 2 | dropout | drought, drouth | drove | drown | drug | druggist, pharmacist | drug(s) | drunk, drunken | druthers | dry dock, dry-dock | dryer | dryly, drily | du | dual, duel | DUAL COMPARISON | DUAL PRONOUN DECLENSION | dub | dubious | duct tape, duck tape | duel | due to, because of, owing to | due to the fact that | dully, duly | dumb, mute | dumbfound, dumfound | DUMMY SUBJECTS | duo, duo- | duodecimo, folio, octavo, quarto, twelvemo, 12mo | duologue | duopoly | duplicate, duplication, duplicity, duplicitous | durance, duress | during the course of | Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch | duvet | dwarf | dwell | dyeing | dyke | dynamo | dynasty | dys- | dyslexia, dyslexic | DYSPHEMISM | each | each and every, each and all | each other, one another | eager | EARLY MODERN ENGLISH | early on | Earth, the earth | earthly, earthy, earthen | easily | east, East, easterly, Eastern, eastern | EASTERN NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL DIALECT | eastward, eastwards | easy, easily | eatable, edible | echelon | ECHOIC WORDS | ecology, environment | economic, economical | ecstasy, ecstacy | ect. | -ection, -exion | edible | edifice | EDITED ENGLISH | EDITORIAL WE | EDUCATIONESE | educationist, educator | -ee | e'er, e're, ere, ere | effect | effective, effectual, efficacious, efficient | EFFECTIVENESS | effectual | effectuate | effeminate, female, feminine, womanly | effete | efficacious, efficient | effluent | effluvium | effrontery | e.g., i.e. | egis | egoist, egotist | egregious, egregiously | either, either … or | eke, eke out, eke | elder, eldest, older, oldest | elderly | eldest | electric, electrical, electronic, electronics | elegant, elegance | ELEGANT VARIATION | elegy, eulogy | elephantine | ELEVATION, ELEVATED | elicit, illicit | eligible, ineligible | ELLIPSIS 1 | ELLIPSIS 2 | ELLIPSIS 3 | elope, elopement | else | elude | elusion | elusive, allusive, illusive, illusory | emanate | embark | embellish | emend | emerge | emigrant, immigrant, immigration, in-migration, migrant, migration, outmigration, emigrate, immigrate, migrate | eminent, immanent, imminent | emote | emotional, emotive | empanel | empathetic, sympathetic, empathize, sympathize, empathy, sympathy | EMPHASIS | EMPHATIC PRONOUNS | employ | employee, employe | emporium | empowerment | EMPTY SUBJECTS | enamor | enclave | enclose, inclose, enclosure, inclosure | encomium | encounter | encroach | end | end, rear | endeavor, attempt, try | ended, ending | endemic, epidemic, pandemic | ending | ENDING A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION | endite | endless | endorse, indorse | endow | end product, end result | end up

enervate, innervate, innerve | enfranchise | engage | England | ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DIFFERENCES IN MEANING, PRONUNCIATION, SPELLING, AND VOCABULARY | English (the) | enhance | enigma, mystery, puzzle, riddle | enigmatic | enjoin | enjoy | enormity, enormousness | enough | enquire, enquirer, enquiry | en route | ensemble | ensure | en't, in't | enter | enthrall, enthral | enthuse | entitle | entitlement | entrust, intrust, trust | enunciate, enunciation | enure | envelop, envelope | envious, enviable | environment | ENVIRONMENT IN PRONUNCIATION | envisage, envision | envoy 1, envoi | envoy 2 | eon, aeon | epic | EPICENE PRONOUNS | epicure, epicurean, Epicurean, epicureanism, Epicureanism | epidemic | | episcopal, Episcopal, Anglican, Episcopalian | epistle, missive | | epithet | epitome | epoch | EPONYM, EPONYMOUS | equable, equitable | equal | equally as | equilibrium | equine | equitable | equivalent | equivocal, ambiguous, ambivalent, cryptic, dubious, enigmatic, mysterious | -er, -est | -er, -or | -er, -re | e're, ere | erode, corrode | erotic | erotica | err | errant, arrant | errata | ersatz | erstwhile, erstwhiles | erupt, irrupt, eruptive, irruptive | -es | escalate | escalator | escape | escapee | esophagus, oesophagus | especial, especially | | Esq. | -esque | Esquire, Esq. | -ess, -ette, -euse, -ienne, -ine, -ix | | essential | -est | Establishment, the | esthete, esthetic | estimate | estimation | estrange | estrogen, oestrogen | et al. | etc., et cetera | eth | -eth | Ethiopian | ethnic, ethnicity | ETHNIC SLURS AND TERMS OF ETHNIC OPPROBRIUM, ETHNIC DESIGNATIONS | -ette | ETYMOLOGICAL FALLACY | ETYMOLOGY | ETYMON | eulogy | | -euse | evacuate | even | event (that), in the | eventuate, eventuality | ever, ever so (often), ever such | every | everybody, everyone | everyday, every day | everyone | everyplace | every so often | every time | every which way | evidence | evidently | evoke, invoke | evolute, evolve | ex-, former, late | exact same | exceed | exceedingly, excessively | except | exception | exceptionable, exceptional | exception proves the rule, the | excess | excessively | excise | excitement, excitation | EXCLAMATION POINT, EXCLAMATION MARK | exclude | exclusive | EXCLUSIVE LANGUAGE | excuse | execrable | execute, assassinate, kill, murder, slay | executor, executioner, executrix | exemplar, exemplary | exhaustive, exhausting | exhibitor, exhibitioner, exhibitionist | exhilarate, exhilaration | exhorbitant | exhuberance, exhuberant | -exion | exist | existence, existent | exonerate | exorbitant | expatriate, expatriot | expect | expectant, expecting | expectorate, expectoration | expediate | expedience, expediency, expedition, expeditiousness | expedient, expeditious, expediently, expeditiously | expedite, expediate | expedition | expeditious, expeditiously | expeditiousness | expel | expensive | experience | expert, expertly | expertise | expertize | explain, explanation | | | explicable | explicate, explain, explication, explanation | EXPOSITORY WRITING, EXPOSITION | ex post facto | expressive | expresso | expressway | exquisite | extant | extemporaneous, impromptu, extempore | extemporize, temporize | extended, extensive | extension | extent, extant | extenuate, extenuating | exterior, external, extraneous, extrinsic | extract, extricate | extraneous | extraordinary | extricate | extrinsic | exuberance, exuberant | exude | EYE DIALECT | eye to eye | eyrie, eyry

-f, -fe | fable | fabulous, fabled | façade, facade | faced | face down | face up to | | facilitator | facility, faculty | facsimile | fact, in fact, in point of fact, the fact is, the fact of the matter is, the fact that | factious, factitious, fictitious | fact is, the; the fact of the matter is | factitious | factor | factotum | facts, true | fact that, the | faculty | faerie, faery | fag, faggot, fagot, fagoting, faggotting | fag end | faggot, faggotting, fagot, fagoting | fail | failing | fair, fare | fairy, faerie, faery, fay | fait accompli | faithfully | fake | faker, fakir | fake titles | fakir | fall | fallacy | fallible, fallacious | false | FALSE COMPARISON, ILLOGICAL COMPARISON, INCOMPLETE COMPARISON | falsehood, falseness, falsity | false titles, bogus titles, coined titles, fake titles | falsity | familiar | fantastic, fantastically | fantasy, phantasy | farce | fare | farther, all the | farther, fartherest, farthest, further, furtherest, furthest | fascinated, fascination | fascinator | fatal, fateful | fated | fateful | father | father-in-law | fault | FAULTY PARALLELISM | faun, fawn | fauna, flora | faux pas | favor, favour | favorable | favorite | favour | fawn | fay | faze, fease, feeze, phase | -fe | fearful, fearsome, fearfully, fearsomely | fease | feasible | feature | feaze | February | fee | feed | feedback | feel | feel bad, feel badly | feel good, feel well | feet | feeze | feisty | feline | fell swoop, one | felony, misdemeanor, violation | female | feminine | FEMININE GENDER | FEMININE OCCUPATIONAL FORMS, FEMININE GENDER FORMS | feminism, feminist | FEMINIST VIEWS OF ENGLISH | ferment, foment | ferrule, ferule, feral | fervent, fervid | fever | fewer | fey, fay | fiancé, fiancee | fiber, fibre | fictitious, fictional | fiddle | field | FIELD LABELS | figurative | figuratively | figure | FIGURE OF SPEECH | Filipino | FILLERS | final | final analysis | finalize | fine, finely | fine arts | finicky, finicking, finical | finished | FINITE AND NONFINITE VERBS | fireproof, fire-resistant, fire-retardant | firm | first | first and foremost | first floor, ground floor | firstly, first | first name, baptismal name, Christian name, forename, given name | FIRST PERSON SINGULAR AND PLURAL | first two/two first, last three/three last | fish | fit 1 | fit 2 | fix | flaccid | flack | flagrant | flair | flak, flack | flak jacket | flamingo | flammable, incombustible, inflammable, noncombustible, nonflammable | flare | flat, flatly | FLAT ADVERBS | flatly | flaunt, flout | flautist | flavor, flavour | flee | flesh, flesh tones, flesh-color(ed), skin-color(ed) | fleshly, fleshy | flesh tones | fleshy | flier, flyer | FLOATING ADVERB | floor | floppy disk | flora | flotsam, jetsam | flounder, founder | flout | flunk | fluoride, fluorine, fluorescent | flush | flutist, flautist | fly, flee | flyer | fob | fo'c'sle | focus | foist, fob | folio | folk, folks | FOLK ETYMOLOGY | folks | follow | following | foment | fond | fondness | foot | for | forbear, forebear | forbid | forceful, forced, forcible | forcemeat | forceps | forcible | forebear | forecast | forecastle, fo'c'sle | forego, forgo | forehead | foreign, alien, foreigner | FOREIGN PHRASES, FOREIGN WORDS, AND FOREIGNISMS | FOREIGN PLURALS | FOREIGN WORDS | forename | foreseeable future | foreword, introduction, preface | for free, free, gratis, without charge, without cost

forget | forgetful | forgo | forlorn | FORMAL AGREEMENT | FORMAL LANGUAGE | formally | FORMAL WRITTEN ENGLISH, FORMAL LANGUAGE, FORMAL USAGE | former, latter | formerly, currently, formally | formidable | formula | formulate, assemble, compose, concoct | for nothing | forte | forthcoming, forthright | for the simple reason (that) | fortissimo | fortuitous, fortunate, fortuitously, fortunately | forum | forward | FOSSIL SUBJUNCTIVES | foul, fowl | found | founder | fowl | | fragrance | franchise | Franglais | frantically, franticly | fraught | free, freely | freedom | free gift | freely | freeway | FRENCH PLURALS | FREQUENCY | friable | fridge | friend | friendly, friendlily, friendlylike | frightened | frightfully | fro | from hence, from thence, from whence | frown | FROZEN FIGURES | fruitful | fruition | fugitive | -ful | full | full dress, full-dress | full-faced, full-figured, full-face | full-fashioned | full-figured | fulsome | fun | FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVES | FUNCTIONAL GRAMMARS | FUNCTIONAL SHIFT | FUNCTION WORDS | fungus | funny | further, furtherest, furthest | FUSED PARTICIPLE | future 1 | future 2, in the near; in the not too distant future | FUTURE TENSE, NOTIONAL FUTURE | FUTURE PERFECT TENSE | -g, -ge | -g-, -gg- | gabardine, gaberdine | gage | gainfully employed | gainsay | gala | gall | gallant | gallows | gallows humor | galore | gambit | gamble, gambol | gamer | gamut | gamy, gamey | ganglion | gantlet | gaol, gaoler | gap | garage | garb | gargantuan, gigantic | garote, garrote, garrotte | gas | gaseous | | gather | | gauge, gage, gouge, gouging | gauntlet, gantlet | gay | gazebo | -ge | gear | gendarme | gender 1 | GENDER 2, GRAMMATICAL AND NATURAL | gender gap | genealogy | General, general | general consensus | GENERALIZATION | GENERALIZATIONS, GRAMMATICAL | generation gap | generic | GENERIC PRONOUNS | GENERIC THIRD PERSON MASCULINE SINGULAR PRONOUN | GENERIC WORDS | genetic, congenital, innate | genial | genie, djin, djinn | GENITIVE, ATTRIBUTIVE | GENITIVE, CLASSIFYING | GENITIVE, DESCRIPTIVE | GENITIVE, DOUBLE | GENITIVE, INDEPENDENT | | GENITIVE, PERIPHRASTIC | GENITIVE, SUBJECTIVE | GENITIVE BEFORE A GERUND | GENITIVE CASE | GENITIVE OF ORIGIN | GENITIVE OF PURPOSE | genius | gent | genteel, gentle, gentile | GENTEELISM | gentile | gentle | gentleman, gentlewoman | gentrification, gentrify | genuine | genus | geometric progression | geriatric, geriatrics | germ | German, Germanic, Teutonic | GERMANIC LANGUAGES | gerrymander | GERUND | GERUND, GENITIVE WITH | GERUND, POSSESSIVE WITH | gesture, gesticulation | get | get hold of, get ahold of | get up | -gg- | ghetto | gibe | gift | gigantic | gild the lily | gill | gimmick, gimmicky | Gipsy, gipsy | girl | girlfriend, boyfriend | girlish | git | given name | gladiola, gladiolus | glamour, glamor, glamorize, glamorous | glance | glean | glimpse, glance | GLOTTAL STOP | glow | go | go along with | | go and | go ape | gobbledygook, gobbledegook | goes without saying, that (it) | gofer, go-fer | good, well | good and | goodwill, good will | GOOD WRITER | gopher, gofer, go-fer | go somebody (them) one better

INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE | incoherent | incombustible | incoming | incomparable, irrefutable, irreparable, irrevocable | INCOMPARABLES | INCOMPLETE COMPARISON | INCOMPLETE SENTENCES | incongruous | in connection with | inconsequential | incorporate | incredible, incredulous | incubus | inculcate | incumbent | incursion | indecorous | INDEFINITE PRONOUNS | INDEFINITE YOU, INDEFINITE ONE | independence | independent | INDEPENDENT CLAUSE | INDEPENDENT GENITIVES | in-depth, in depth | indestructible | indeterminately | index | Indian | INDICATIVE, SUBJUNCTIVE | indict, indite | indifferent | INDIRECT ADDRESS, INDIRECT DISCOURSE | INDIRECT OBJECT | INDIRECT QUOTATION | indiscriminate, indiscriminating, undiscriminate, undiscriminating | indisputable | individual | INDO-EUROPEAN | indorse | indubitably | induce, deduce | induction, deduction | inductive | indulge | indulgent | -ine | inedible, poisonous, uneatable, unedible | ineffective, ineffectual, inefficacious | ineligible | inept | in excess of | inexecrable, execrable, inexorable | inexplicable | | infamous, infamy | infatuated | infectious | infer, imply | inferior, superior | inferno | infest | infiltrate | infiltration | INFINITIVE 1 | INFINITIVE 2, SUBJECT OF AN | INFIX | inflammable | INFLATED DICTION | INFLECTION, INFLEXION, INFLECTED, INFLECTIONAL | inflict, afflict | influence | INFORMAL WRITTEN ENGLISH, INFORMAL USAGE, INFORMAL | informant, informer | infrastructure | infringe | infuse | -ing | ingenious, ingenuous, ingenuity, ingenuousness | ingenue, ingénue | ingenuity, ingenuous, ingenuousness | in-group | inhabitable | inhibit, prohibit | in hope(s) of, in hope(s) that | inhuman, nonhuman, unhuman | inimical, inimicable | INITIALISMS | initials as abbreviations for names of people | ink, pencil | INKHORN TERMS | in kind | INLAND NORTHERN REGIONAL DIALECT | -in-law, in-law | in length, in number, in shape, in size, in width | in line | in-migrant, in-migrate, in-migration | innate | innervate, innerve | inning | innocent | innovation, innovative | in number | inoculate | in one's birthday suit | in order that | in order to | in part | in point of fact | input, output, throughput, thruput | inquire, enquire, enquirer, enquiry, inquirer, inquiry | in re | in regard(s) to | in respect to, in respect of, respecting, with respect to | inroad | insanitary, unsanitary | insensible, insensitive | inseparable | in shape | in short supply | inside, inside of | insight | insightful | insignia | insinuate | insist | in size | insoluble, insolvable | inspire, inspiration, inspirational | inspissate, inspissated, inspissation | in spite of | in spite of the fact that | instance | instill, instil | instinctive, instinctual | institution, institutionalize | instruct | instructional, instructive | instructor | INSTRUMENTAL CASE | insure, assure, ensure | insurance, assurance | in surgery | in't | integral | integrate | integration | intend | intend for | intense | INTENSIFIERS, INTENSIVES | intensive, intense | INTENSIVES | intent 1 | intent 2, intention | inter | inter-, intra- | intercede | interest | interesting, interestingly, interestingly enough | interface | interment, internment | in terms of | international, foreign | | internecine | internment | interpersonal | interpose | interpretive, interpretative | INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS | INTERROGATIVE SENTENCE | interstate | intervene | intestinal fortitude | in that case, in the case of | in the absence of | in the altogether | in the buff | in the circumstances | in the course of | in the event that | in the final analysis | in the hope(s) of, in the hope(s) that | in the last analysis | in the light of, in light of | in the near future, in the not too distant future | in the worst way | in this day and age | INTIMATE LEVEL | into | intolerant, intolerable | INTONATION | intra- | INTRANSITIVE VERBS | intricate, intricacy | intrigue | introduce | introduction

intrude | INTRUSION, INTRUSIVE R, INTRUSIVE SOUND OR LETTER | intrust | intuit | inundate | inure, enure | inveigh, inveigle | invent | inverse | inversion 1, diversion, perversion | INVERSION 2, SYNTACTIC | INVERSION IN QUESTIONS | INVERTED COMMAS | invest | in view of the fact that | invite | invoke | involve | invulnerable | in whole, in part | in width | iota | IPA | ir- | iridescent | ironically | IRONY | irrefutable | irregardless | irrelevant | irreligious, nonreligious, not religious, unreligious | irreparable | irrevocable | irrupt, irruptive | is, are | is because | | ism, -ism | isolate | Israeli | issue | -ist | -istic | is when, is where | it | Italian | ITALIAN PLURALS | Italian sandwich | ITALICS | iterate | it goes without saying | it is I who, it is they who | its, it's | it's me | -ix | jacket | jamb, jam | JAP | Jap, Japanese | JARGON, CANT | jawbone | jealous, zealous | jeer | jejune | jetsam | jet set | Jew, Israeli, jew, Jewish | jewelry, jewellery | Jewess | jibe, gibe, gybe | job action | jobless | john | join | jot | JOURNALESE | Jr. | judgment, judgement | judicial, judicious | judiciary | judicious | Jugoslavia | juncture | junior | junket | junkie, junky | junta | jurist, juror | just | just as | Justice | justify, explain, account for | juvenile | juvenilia | kangaroo | karat | kempt | kerb | kernel | kerosene, coal oil, kerosine, paraffin | ketchup, catchup, catsup | key | kibbutz | | kickback | kickoff, kick off | kid | kill | -kill | kilo | kilo- | kilometer | kilt, kilts | kin | kind, in | kind, manner, sort, style, type, way | kindly | King James | kith | kitsch, kitschy | kitty-corner(ed), catty-corner(ed), cater-corner(ed) | klutz | knee-jerk | kneel | knickers | knife | knit | knock up | knot | know | know as, know that | know-how | knowing, knowledgeable | know that | kosher | kowtow | kraft paper, craft paper | kudos, kudo | -l-, -ll- | lab, Lab | labor, labour | laboratory, lavatory | labour | lack | lacuna | lad, lass | lade | laden | LADINO | lady | lady-in-waiting | lag | laid-back | lama, llama | | | lampoon | landward, landwards | LANGUAGE COMMUNITY | LANGUAGE OF BASEBALL | LANGUAGE OF BASKETBALL | large, largely | largeness | large-scale, small-scale | larva | larynx | lass | last, latest | lastly | last three | late | later on, later | latest | LATINATE VOCABULARY VERSUS ANGLO-SAXON WORDS | LATIN PLURALS | latter | laudable, laudatory | laugh | lavatory | lawman | lawyer, attorney, attorney-at-law, barrister, counsel, counselor, counselor-at-law, solicitor | lay, lie | lay hold of | lay of the land | lead | leader | leading edge | leading question | leaf | lean | leap | learn, teach | learned | leary | lease, rent, let

materiel | mathematical progression | matrix | mature, maturity | maunder, meander | mauve | maxim | maximize, minimize | maximum | may | may, might | maybe, may be | may can | mayo | may of | mayoral, mayoralty | Mc- | me | meager, meagre | mean | meander | mean for, intend for, want for | MEANING | MEANING: AMERICAN AND BRITISH DIFFERENCES | meaningful | meaningless, mindless, nonsensical, senseless, silly | means | meant | meantime, meanwhile | measles | medal, meddle | media | median, average, mean, modal, mode | mediate | medieval, mediaeval | mediocre | meditate | medium, media, mediums | meet with, meet up, meet up with | mega, mega-, meg- | meld | melted | memento | memo | memorandum | mendacity, mendicity | menial | mentality | mention | meretricious, meritorious | | mesdames | Messrs. | metal, mettle | metamorphosis | METAPHORS | METATHESIS | meter, metre | meticulous | metre | METROPOLITAN NEW YORK CITY REGIONAL DIALECT | mettle | Mexican, Mexican-American | MIDDLE ENGLISH | might | mighta | might could, might should, might would | mightily | might of | might've | might would | mighty, mightily | migrant, migrate, migration | milieu | militate | milliard | mind-boggling | mindless | mine | mine, my, in compound constructions | mineralogy | minimal | minimize | miniscule | minister | minor | minority | minus | minuscule, miniscule | minute | minutia | misanthrope, misogamist, misogynist | mischievous | misdemeanor, misdemeanour | mishap, accident | misinformation | mislead | misogamist, misogynist | MISPLACED MODIFIERS, MISRELATED MODIFIERS | Miss, Misses | missile, missal, missive | Missis, missis, Missus, missus | misspell, misspelling | MISSPELLING | Mister, mister | mistrust, distrust | mistrustful | misunderstanding | mitigate | mix | MIXED METAPHORS | -mm- | mnemonic | moat | mobile, movable, moveable | mock, mock up, mockup, mock-up | modal | MODAL AUXILIARIES, MODALS | mode | MODE | modern, modernistic | MODERN ENGLISH | modernistic | MODIFIERS, MODIFICATION, STRUCTURES OF MODIFICATION | | Mohammed | Mohammedan | mold, mould | molt, moult | molten, melted | momentarily | momentary, momentous | momento | momentous | money | Mongol | mongoose | monogram, monograph | monologue, dialog, dialogue, duologue, monolog | monopoly | MOOD, MODE | moot | moral, morale | moratorium | more, most | more important, more importantly | mores | more than one | MORPHOLOGY | mortar | Moslem | mosquito | most 1 | most 2 | most important, most importantly | mostly | mote, moat | mother-in-law | motif, motive | motorway | mould | moult | movable | move, your | moveable | mow | Mr., Mister, mister | Mrs., Missis, missis, Missus, missus | ms, MS | Ms., Ms | much | muchly | mucous, mucus | mug, mugging | Muhammad | Muhammadan | mulatto, half-breed, octoroon, quadroon | multilateral | multiple negation | munch | munchies | murder | murderer | muse | MUSLIM, MOHAMMEDAN, MOSLEM, MUHAMMADAN | must 1 | must 2 | musta | | must needs | must of, must've | mute | mutual, common, reciprocal | my, mine, in compound constructions | myself | mysterious

mystery | myth, mythical | -n-, -nn- | 'n' | nadir | nag | naif, naif, naive, naive, naivete, naiveté, naïveté, naivety, naivety | naked, nude | namely | names of organizations | naphtha | napkin | narc | narcissus | narcotic | nary | native | Native American | NATURAL LANGUAGE, ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE | nature | naught, nought | nauseous, nauseated, nauseating | naval, navel | nay | near, nearly | nearby, near by | nearly | near miss | neat | neaten | nebula | necessary | necessity | née, nee | need | needless to say | needs | ne'er | NEGATION | NEGATIVE | NEGATIVE-RAISING | neglectful | negligent, negligible | negotiate | Negress | Negro | neither | neither … nor | NEOLOGISM | ne plus ultra | nerve-wracking, nerve-racking | -ness, -ty | NEUTER GENDER | never | new innovation | new record | news | NEW YORK CITY DIALECT | next | nice | nice and | nicely | nicety, niceness | nickel, nickle | nickname | nigger | nigh | nights | -nik | nimbus | nite | | -nn- | no | nobody, no one | nod (the head) | no doubt | no-host | nohow | noisome, noisy | no less than | nom de plume | NOMINAL 1 | nominal 2 | NOMINATIVE CASE | non- | NONCE WORD, NEOLOGISM | noncombustible | none | nonetheless | none too | NONFINITE VERBS | nonflammable | nonhuman | nonreligious | NONRESTRICTIVE APPOSITIVES | NONRESTRICTIVE CLAUSES | NONRESTRICTIVE MODIFIERS | NONSENSE WORD | nonsensical | non sequitur | nonsocial | NONSTANDARD | non-U | no one | noplace | no problem | nor | normalcy, normality | north, North, northerly, northern, Northern | NORTHERN REGIONAL DIALECT | NORTHERN URBAN AMERICAN BLACK ENGLISH | NORTH MIDLAND REGIONAL DIALECT | northward, northwards | no sooner | nostalgia | nosy, nosey | not about to | not all, all … not | not all that | notary public | not as, not so | not … but | not hardly | nother | nothing loath | notion | NOTIONAL AGREEMENT (NOTIONAL CONCORD) | NOTIONAL FUTURE | NOTIONAL PASSIVE | NOTIONAL SUBJECT | not only … but also | notorious, infamous, infamy, notoriety | not religious | not so, not as | not that big of a deal | not too | not to worry | not un- | nought | NOUN ADJUNCT | NOUN MODIFIER | NOUN PHRASES | NOUNS | NOUNS AS ADJECTIVES | NOUNS AS VERBS, VERBIFIED NOUNS | NOUNS ENDING IN -F, -FE: SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION OF PLURALS AND FUNCTIONAL SHIFTS TO VERBS | NOUNS JOINED BY AND, OR | nouveau riche | now | no way | nowhere near | nowheres | nth | nubile | nuclear | nucleus | nude | NUMBER 1 | number 2 | NUMBER IN NOUNS ENDING IN -ICS | numbers | numbers, cardinal and ordinal | NUMBERS, THE VERBAL REPRESENTATION OF | numerals, Arabic | numerals, Roman | numerator | numerous | nuptial, nuptials | nurse | O, oh | -o | oasis | oater | oath | obedient | obeisance, obesity | | objet d'art, art object, object of art | obligated, obliged, obligate, oblige | obliqueness, obliquity | oblivious, forgetful, neglectful, unaware | obnoxious | OBSCENE 1 | obscene 2, obscenity | observance, observation | observant | observation | obsessed | OBSOLETE 1, OBSOLESCENT | obsolete 2, obsolescent | obtain

picturesque | pidgin, pigeon | PIDGIN ENGLISH | piece, peace | pier | pier glass | pigeon | PIG LATIN | pigmy | pilaf | Pilipino | pinch-hit, pinch hitter | pip | pique | piqué, piquet | pistil, pistol, pistole | pit | piteous, pitiable, pitiful | -place, -where | placebo | PLAGIARISM | plaid, tartan | plain, plane | plaintiff, complaint, plaintive | plan | plane | PLANNED LEVEL | plateau | plausible | play | playwright, playwrite | plead | pleasantry, pleasantness | please | pleasing | pled | plenitude, plentitude | plenteous, plentiful | plentitude | plenty | PLEONASMS | plethora | plow, plough | plunge | PLUPERFECT TENSE | PLUPLUPERFECT TENSE | PLURAL | plurality | PLURALS OF COMPOUND NOUNS | PLURALS OF LETTERS AND NUMBERS | PLURALS OF NOUNS, THE REGULAR PATTERNS FOR | PLURALS OF NOUNS, UNCHANGING | PLURALS OF NOUNS ENDING IN -F, -FE | PLURALS OF NOUNS ENDING IN -O | plus | plus fours | P.M. | podium, dais, lectern, pulpit | poetess | POETIC, LITERARY | POETRY, THE QUOTATION OF | point in time | point is, the | point of fact, in | point of view | poison, poisonous | poke | police officer, policeman, policewoman | political, politic | politically correct, P(.)C(.), political correctness | politics | pollute, pollution | polyglot | pommel, pummel | poncho | ponder | poof, poofter | poor boy | poorly | pop | pore, pour | pork | porpoise | portentous, pretentious | portfolio | portico | portion | PORTMANTEAU WORDS | positive attitude, positive advice, positive influence, positive thinking | POSITIVE DEGREE, COMPARATIVE DEGREE, SUPERLATIVE DEGREE | POSITIVES, LOST | positivism | possess, have, own | possessed | POSSESSIVE | POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS | POSSESSIVE WITH GERUND | possibility | possible, probable | POSSLQ | posterior | post-graduate | postscript | potato | pouf, poof, poofter, pouff, pouffe, poof | pour | -pp- | practicable, practical | practically | practice, practise | preacher | precede, proceed | precedence, precedent(s) | precip, precipitation | precipitate, precipitous, precipitately, precipitously | precipitation | precipitous, precipitously | précis | preclude | precondition, condition | predestine | PREDICATE 1 | predicate 2 | PREDICATE ADJECTIVE | PREDICATE NOMINATIVE | predominant, predominate, predominantly, predominately | preemie | preempt, pre-empt | preface | prefer | preferable | preference | PREFIX | PREFIXES, HYPHENATION OF | pregnant | prejudice, prejudiced | prejudicial | premature | premier, première, premiere | premises, premise, premiss | PREPOSITION 1, ENDING A SENTENCE WITH A | PREPOSITION 2, PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE | prerequisite | prescribe, proscribe | PRESCRIPTIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR AND USAGE | present | present incumbent | presently | PRESENT PARTICIPLES | PRESENT PERFECT TENSE | PRESENT TENSE | present writer, present author, present commentator, present observer | preside | PRESTIGE DIALECT | presume | presumptive, presumptuous | pretense, pretence | pretentious | PRETENTIOUS WORDS | PRETERIT(E) | preternatural | pretty | prevail | prevaricate, procrastinate | prevent | preventative, preventive | previous to, prior to | prewar | priest, clergyman, curate, dominie, minister, parson, pastor, preacher, rabbi, rector, vicar | prima donna | PRIMARY REFERENCE | PRIMARY STRESS, SECONDARY STRESS, TERTIARY STRESS, UNSTRESSED | principal, principle | PRINCIPAL PARTS OF VERBS | principle | PRINCIPLE OF PROXIMITY | prioritize | prior to | prise | pristine | privatize | prix fixe | prize, prise, pry | pro | proactive | probable | probability | problem | proceed, proceeds, procedure, proceeding(s) | procrastinate | procure, procurement | prodigal | producer, conductor, director | product, end | productive | PROFANITY | professor, instructor, teacher

proficient | profit | prognosis | program | progression (arithmetic, geometric, mathematical) | PROGRESSIVE ASPECT | PROGRESSIVE PASSIVE | prohibit | project | prolegomenon | PROLIXITY | promise | prone, prostrate, supine | PRONOUN | PRONOUN AGREEMENT | pronounce | PRONOUNS, REFLEXIVE | PRONOUN WITH POSSESSIVE ANTECEDENT | pronunciation 1 | PRONUNCIATION 2: AMERICAN AND BRITISH DIFFERENCES | PRONUNCIATION OF COMPOUND WORDS | PRONUNCIATION OF NOUNS ENDING IN -AGE | PRONUNCIATION OF NOUNS ENDING IN -F, -FE | PRONUNCIATIONS, SPELLING | PRONUNCIATIONS, VARIANT | PRONUNCIATIONS OF WORDS ENDING IN -TH, -THE | PROOFREADER'S MARKS | propaganda | propellant, propellent | propeller, propellor | PROPER NOUNS, PROPER NAMES | prophecy, prophesy | prophesize | prophesy | propitious | proportion | proportional, proportionable, proportionate | proposal, proposition | proprietary, propriety | prorate | prosaic, prosy | proscribe | PROSE | proselyte, proselytize | prospective | prospectus | prosthesis, prosthetics, prosthetic | prostrate | prosy | protagonist | protect | protégé(e) | protest | protractor | provable, provably, provability | prove | proverb | provide | provided, providing | provident, providential | province | proviso | provoke | proximity | PROXIMITY, THE PRINCIPLE OF | prudent, prudential, providential | pry | pseudo, pseudo- | P.S. | pseudonym | psychoanalyze | psychosis | publicly, publically | publish | pulpit | pummel | punctilious, punctual | PUNCTUATION; PUNCTUATION MARKS | pundit | punish | pupil, student | puppet, marionette | purchase | purebred | purge | PURISTS | purport | purposefully, purposedly, purposely | pursuit | pusillanimous | put down, putdown | put English on | put stock in | put your best foot forward | puzzle | Pygmy, pygmy, pigmy | pyjamas | qua | quadroon | QUALIFIERS | quandary | quantum | quantum jump, quantum leap | quarter | quartet, quartette, quintet, quintette, sextet, sextette, septet, septette, octet, octette | quarto | quasar | quash | quasi, quasi- | quay, cay, key | queer | query, inquiry | question | questionable, questioning | QUESTION MARK | questionnaire | QUESTION SENTENCE | quick 1 | quick 2, quickly | quick fix | quid pro quo | quiet, quieten | quilt, comfort, comforter, duvet | quint | quintet, quintette | quintuplet, quint | quip | quire | quisling | quit | quite | qui vive, on the | Quixote, quixotic | quiz | quondam | QUOTATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT | quotation, quote | QUOTATION OF POETRY | QUOTATION MARKS | quote | quoth | quotient | q.v. | -r-, -rr- | rabbi | rabbit | rabbit ears | race, racial | racialism | racism | RACIST LANGUAGE | rack, wrack | racket, racquet | radiator | radical, radicle | radio | radius | railing | railroad, railway | rain | raise 1, bring up, rear | raise 2, rise | raise havoc | RAISING | raison d'être | Ralph | rambunctious | rancor, rancour, rancorous | range | rap | rape | rapport | rapt, wrapped | rarebit | rarefy, rarefied | rarely ever | rarify | rather | rather than | ratio | ration | rattle | ravage, ravish, ravishing | rave | ravel, unravel | ravish, ravishing | raze, raise | re | re- | -re, -er | reaction | read | readable | readers | read where | ready-made | real, really | real facts

realistic, unrealistic | really something | realm | realtor | ream 1 | ream 2 | rear | rear (end) | rear-end | reason, cause | reasonable | reason is because | reason why, the | rebel | rebuff, refuse, reject, repel, repulse | recall | receipt | receipt | receptive | recess | recession | recipe, receipt | recipient | reciprocal | recital | reckon | recognize | recollect, recall, remember | reconcile | record, new | recorder | recourse | recrudescence | recto, verso | rector | redolent | REDUNDANT, REDUNDANCY | refer | refer back | referee, umpire | referendum | REFERENT | reflection, reflexion | REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS | refuse | refute | regalia | regard | regarding, as regards, in regard(s) to, with regard(s) to | regardless | REGIONAL DIALECT | regret | regretful, regrettable, regretfully, regrettably | REGULAR | REGULAR PATTERNS FOR PLURALS OF NOUNS | reign, rain, rein | reiterate, iterate | reject | rejoice | relate | relating to | relation, relative | relationship | relative | RELATIVE CLAUSES | relatively | RELATIVE PRONOUNS | RELATIVE PRONOUNS, OMITTED | relative to, relating to | release(d) time | relevant | relic, relict | RELIC PLURALS OF NOUNS | RELICS AND FOSSILS | relict | relieve | religious | relish | remains | remand, remand back | remediable, remedial | remedy | remember | remind | remittance, remission | remunerate, remuneration | Renaissance, renascence, renascent | render | rendezvous | renowned, renown | rent | rep | repairable, reparable | repast | repeat | repeat again | repel | repellent, repellant, repulsive, revolting | repertoire, repertory | REPETITION | repetitious, repetitive | replace | replete | replica, copy, reproduction | replicate, copy, duplicate, repeat | reportedly | repository | reprisal | reproduction | republican, Republican | repugnance | repulse | repulsive | request | require | requirement, requisite | resemblance | resentment | reside | resin, rosin | resource, recourse, resort | respect | respectable, respectful, respective | respecting | respective | respectively | RESPONSE UTTERANCE | responsibility | restaurateur, restauranteur | restive, restless | RESTRICTIVE AND NONRESTRICTIVE CLAUSES | RESTRICTIVE AND NONRESTRICTIVE MODIFIERS | RESTRICTIVE APPOSITIVES | result, end | resume, résumé, resumé | reticent, reticence | retiree | retro- | return back | Rev. | revel | revelation, Revelation(s) | revenge | Reverend, Rev. | reversal, reversion | reverse | reverse discrimination | reversion | revert back, revert | review, revue | revise | revolting | revue | reward | RHETORIC | rhinoceros | RHYME, RIME, ASSONANCE, CONSONANCE | RHYME IN PROSE, RIME RICHE | RHYMING COMPOUNDS | RHYMING SLANG | RHYTHM IN PROSE | rich, wealthy | rid | riddle | right | right bank (of a river) | rightly | right of way, right-of-way | right-to-life, right-to-lifer | right-to-work | rigor, rigour, rigorous | rill | RIME | RIME RICHE | ring 1 | ring 2 | riparian | rip off, rip-off, ripoff | rise | rise, arise, get up | rite, right, wright, write | River | riverine, riparian | rivulet | rob, steal | robbery | rock, stone | rock and a hard place, between a | rocks, on the | rodeo | role, rôle, roll | ROMAN | romance | Romania, Rumania | Roman numerals | rondeau, rondo, round | roof | rooftop

root, rout, route | rosin | rostrum | rote, by | rotund | round | round, 'round | ROUND S | rouse | rout, route | royal we | -rr- | R's, the three | rucksack | ruddy | RULES AND GENERALIZATIONS | RULES OF GRAMMAR | Rumania | rumor, rumour | rump | run | run | run for office | runner-up | RUN-ON SENTENCES | -s, -es | -'s, -s' | sabotage | sack | sacrilege, sacrilegious | sacrosanct | sadism | Sahara Desert | said | sailer, sailor | Saint(e), St(e). | St. James, King James | St. John | sake, sakes | salary, fee, honorarium, payment in kind, wage | salary increment, bonus, COLA, raise, rise | salmon, salmonella | salon, saloon | salt, salts | salutary, salute, salvo | salvable, salvageable | salvo | same | same as | same token, by the | sanatorium | sanctimonious, sanctimony | sanction | sanctum, sanctum sanctorum | sang | sanguine, sanguinary | sanitarium, sanatorium, sanitorium | sank | sans | sarcasm, sarcastic | sarcoma | sarcophagus | sardonic | sartorial, sartorially | sat | sated, satiated | sateen | satellite | satiated | satin, sateen | satire, satyr | saturate | saturnalia | satyr | Saud, Saudi | savant, idiot savant | save, save for | saving | saving | saving grace | savior, saviour | savvy | saw 1 | saw 2, old | say | say the least, to | saying | saying, that (it) goes without | saying goes, as the; they say | scabrous, scabious, scabby | scale, large and small | scallop, scollop | scan | scant | scapegoat | scarce, scarcely | scared, scare | scarf | scarify | scena | scenario | scene | scent | sceptic, sceptical, scepticism | scheme, schema | schism, schist, schizo, schizo- | schlemiel, schlep, schlock, schmaltz, schmo, schmuck, schnook, schnozzle, schtick | SCHOLARLY GRAMMARS | SCHWA | science and art | SCIENTIFIC ENGLISH | scintilla, iota, jot, smidgin | scissors | scoff | scollop | scone, Scone | score | scorn | scotch 1 | Scotch 2, Scottish, Scots, Scot, Scotchman, Scotsman, Scotswoman | scrip, script | scripture, Scripture(s) | scruffy | scrumptious | scruple | scull, skull | sculp, sculpt, sculpture | scurfy, scruffy, scurvy | scuttlebutt | s.d. | seamy | seasonable, seasonal, unseasonable, unseasonal, seasonably, seasonally, unseasonably, unseasonally | second | SECONDARY REFERENCE | SECONDARY STRESS | secondly | SECOND PERSON SINGULAR AND PLURAL | second to none | secrete | secretion | SECRET LANGUAGES | secular, sectarian | secure | -sede | see | seed 1 | seed 2, kernel, pip, pit, stone | seed | -seed | see eye to eye | seeing, seeing as, seeing as how, seeing that | seek | seem | seen | see where | see with half an eye | segregate | segregation | seldom ever, seldom if ever, seldom or ever, seldom or never | self | -self | self- | self-confessed, self-addressed, self-defeating, self-deprecating, self-destruct | seltzer | semantic, semantics | SEMANTIC CHANGE | SEMANTIC DISTINCTION, SEMANTIC DIFFERENCE | semi | semi- | semiannual, semi-annual, semimonthly, semimonthly, etc. | SEMICOLON | SEMIFORMAL, SEMIFORMAL WRITTEN ENGLISH, SEMIFORMAL USAGE | semi-monthly | seminal | Semitic, anti-Semitic | senile, senescent | senior, junior, Jr., Sr. | senior citizen | sense, feel, recognize | senseless | sensible, sensitive, susceptible | sensibility, sensitiveness, sensitivity | sensitive | sensitiveness, sensitivity | sensual, sensuous, sensory | SENTENCE | SENTENCE ADJECTIVES | SENTENCE ADVERBS | SENTENCE MODIFIER | SENTENCE TYPES | sentinel, sentry | sentient, sententious | sentry | separate, separateness, separation, separately | SEQUENCE OF TENSES | seraph | serendipity, serendipitous

serial | series | SERIES CONSTRUCTIONS | serum | serve my turn | service | serviette, napkin | session | set, sit | settee, settle | sew | sewage, sewer, sewerage | sex, gender | sexism, sexist | SEXIST LANGUAGE | sextet, sextette, septet, septette | shade, blind | shake | shake the head, nod (the head) | Shakespeare, Shakespearean | shall, will | sham | shambles | shan't | share 1 | share 2, stock | shark | sharp | she | s/he, (s)he | sheaf | shear | shears | sheath, sheathe | sheer | sheik, sheikh | shelf life | sherbet, sherbert, sorbet | sheveled | shine | ship 1 | ship 2, boat | shirk | shoe | shone | shook (up) | shooting | shop 1 | shop 2, bodega, boutique, shoppe, store | shoptalk, talk shop | shorn | short | short-lived | short supply, in | should, would | shoulda, should of, coulda, could of, woulda, would of | show | shower activity | show off, showoff | show up | shrink 1 | shrink 2 | shrouded in secrecy | shy of, shy about | shyster | sibling | sic | sick, ill, sickness, illness | sick at the stomach | sick day, sick leave | sick humor, sick joke | sick in the stomach | sick leave | sickness | sick-out | sick to (at, in) the stomach | side | side of the angels | side by side, side to side | sidious | sight | significant, significantly | SIGNS OF AGGREGATION | silencer | SILENT LETTERS | silicon, silicone | silly | similar in, similar to | SIMILAR OR APPARENTLY SIMILAR WORDS, CONFUSION OF | similar to | SIMILES | simpatico | simple | simple reason (that), for the | SIMPLE SENTENCE | SIMPLICITY | simplistic | simply | simulate, dissimulate | simultaneous, simultaneously | since | | sinecure | sine die | sine qua non | sing | single, singles | SINGLE QUOTATION MARKS | sinister | sink | Sino- | Sir, Dame | sirup | sister-in-law | sit | site | sitting room | situate | situation | SITUATION UTTERANCE, RESPONSE UTTERANCE | sizable, sizeable | skeptic, sceptic, scepticism, skepticism, sceptical, skeptical | ski | skillful, skilled, skill, craft, trade | skin-color(ed) | skirt | skull | skycap | skyjack, skyjacker | slack, slacken, slake | slacks, knickers, pants, trousers | slake | slander, libel, slang | SLANG | SLASH, SLASH MARK | slave of, slave to | slay | sleep | sleeper | sleep sound, sleep tight | sleight of hand | slept | slew | slick | slink | slit | slow, slowly | slunk | small businessman, small-business man | small-scale | smarmy | smashing | smell | smidgin | sneak | snow, snow job | snuck | so, so that | soap opera, soap | so … as | sob | so-called | sociable, social | SOCIAL DIALECT, CLASS DIALECT | social disease | SOCIOLINGUISTICS, SOCIOLINGUIST | socks, sox | soda, club soda, pop, seltzer, soda pop, sparkling water, tonic | chesterfield, couch, davenport, day bed, settee, settle, studio bed, studio couch | so far as | softback, softcover | soft sell | software | soiled | SOLECISM | solicitor | SOLIDUS | solon | so long | so long as | solution | some | -some | somebody, someone | somebody else's | someday, some day | | some of | someone | someplace | somersault, summersault | something, somethin', sumpin' | something, somewhat | something else, really something | some time, someday, some day, sometime, sometimes | someway, someways

somewhat | somewhere, somewheres | son-in-law | sophisticated, sophisticate, sophistication | soprano | sorbet | sort | sort of | sort of a | so that | sound, soundly | sound, sound off, sound out | south, South, southerly, Southern, southern | SOUTHERN REGIONAL DIALECT | SOUTH MIDLAND REGIONAL DIALECT | southward, southwards | SOUTHWESTERN REGIONAL DIALECT | soviet | sow | sox | spacial | spake | SPANGLISH | Spaniard, Spanish | sparing in, sparing of, sparing with | sparkling water | spat | spate | spatial, spacial | spay | speak | speak to, speak with | special, especial, specially, especially | speciality, specialty | SPECIALIZATION | specialty | species, specie | speciesism | specious | spectators | speech | SPEECH COMMUNITY, LANGUAGE COMMUNITY | SPEECH FORMULAS | spell 1 | spell 2 | SPELLING 1: AMERICAN AND BRITISH DIFFERENCES | SPELLING 2, MISSPELLING, AND SPELLING REFORM | SPELLING: PLURALS OF NOUNS ENDING IN -F, -FE | SPELLING: PLURALS OF NOUNS ENDING IN -O | SPELLING OF COMPOUND WORDS | SPELLING OF -ING AND -ED FORMS OF VERBS ENDING IN -IC, -AC | SPELLING OF UNSTRESSED VOWELS | SPELLING OF WORDS CONTAINING -EI- OR -IE- | SPELLING OF WORDS ENDING IN -ER, -OR | SPELLING OF WORDS ENDING IN -ER, -RE | | SPELLING OF WORDS ENDING IN -OR, -OUR | SPELLING OF WORDS ENDING IN -SE, -CE | SPELLING OF WORDS USING DIGRAPHS | SPELLING PRONUNCIATIONS | SPELLING REFORM | SPELLINGS, VARIANT | spell out | spend | sperm | sphere | | spiffy | spill | spin, spin doctor | spiral | spiritual, spiritous, spirituous | spit | | splendiferous | split | SPLIT INFINITIVE | spoil | spokesperson | sponge | spontaneity | spoof | spook | | | sport, sporting, sports | spouse | sprain | spring, spring for | sprite, spright, sprightly | spurious | SQUARE BRACKETS | square one | squoze | stadium | staff, staffer | stage | | stall | stamen, stamina | stamp | stanch, staunch | STANDARD, COMMON, AND VULGAR ENGLISH | STANDARD ENGLISH, STANDARD | STANDARD USAGE | standee | stand for office | standpoint, point of view, viewpoint | stanza | start | stash | stat | state | STATEMENT | state of the art, state-of-the-art | station | stationary, stationery | statistics, statistic | status | STATUS LABELS | staunch | stave | stay, stop, stop by | steal | stem | stem to stern | stench | stepmother, stepchild, stepfather | STEREOTYPE | stewardess | stick | stigma | stiletto | still and all | still life | stimulant, stimulus | sting 1 | sting 2 | stink | stock, to put stock in, to take stock in, to take stock of | stocking, sock | stoic, stoical | stomp, stamp | stone | stoned | stonewall | stood | stop, stop by | store | story, storey | straight, strait | straightened, straitened | straightjacket, straightlaced | strain, sprain | strait | straitened | straitjacket, straightjacket, straitlaced, straightlaced | strangle | strata, stratas | strategy, tactics | stratum | stream, beck, brae, branch, brook, creek, crick, rill, rivulet, run, -kill | strength, length | STRESS | STRESS IN COMPOUND WORDS AND PHRASES | strew | stricken | stride | strike | string | strive | stroke, stroking | STRONG VERBS 1 | STRONG VERBS 2, WEAK VERBS, THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE TERMS | strove | struck | STRUCTURAL GRAMMARS | STRUCTURES OF MODIFICATION | strung | stuck | student | studio bed, studio couch | stuff | stung | stunk | stunning | sty, stye | STYLE | style | stylus | suave | sub | subconscious, unconscious | SUBJECT, GRAMMATICAL | SUBJECTIVE GENITIVE | SUBJECT OF AN INFINITIVE | SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT | SUBJUNCTIVE | SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD

submarine, grinder, hero, hoagie, Italian sandwich, poor boy, sub, torpedo | submariner | submit | subnormal, abnormal, paranormal, supernormal | SUBORDINATE CLAUSE | SUBORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS | subpoena, subpena | subsequent, subsequently, subsequent to | subsist, exist | substance abuse, controlled substance | SUBSTANDARD, NONSTANDARD | substantial, substantive | SUBSTANTIVE | substitute | subway, tube, underground, underpass | succeed | successfully, successively | succor, succour | succubus, incubus | such | such as | suffer | suffice | sufficient, enough, sufficient enough | sufficiently | SUFFIX | suffragan | suffragist | suggested, suggestive | suitable | sulfuric, sulfureous, sulfurous, sulfury | summersault | summon, summons | sumpin', somethin', something | sundry, sundries | sung | sunk, sunken | super-, supra- | supercede | superfluous | superhighway | superior | SUPERLATIVE DEGREE | SUPERLATIVE DEGREE USED OF TWO | supernatural, preternatural, supranatural, unnatural | supernormal | SUPERPLUPERFECT | supersede, supercede, surpass | supervise | supervisor | supine | supper | supplement, complement | supplementary, complementary | supportive | suppose, supposing | supposed | supposing | supra- | supranatural | supreme | Supreme Court | surcease | sure, surely | sure and | surely | surgery, operation, surgical procedure, in surgery | surmise | surpass | surprised | surveillance, surveillant, surveil | susceptible | suspected | suspenders | sustain | swap, swop | swear, swearword | sweat | sweat equity | sweep | swell 1 | swell 2 | swift, swiftly | swim | swine | swing, swinger, swinging | swivel | swollen | swop | swore, sworn | swum | swung | SYLLABLES | syllabus | SYLLEPSIS | symbol | sympathetic, sympathize, sympathy | symposium | SYNCOPE | syndrome | SYNECDOCHE | synergy, synergism, synergistic | SYNONYM, SYNONYMIES | synopsis | SYNTACTIC | SYNTACTIC BLENDS | SYNTACTIC INVERSION | SYNTAX | synthesis | synthetic | syringe | syrup, sirup | systematic, systemic, systematically, systemically | systemize, systematize | -t-, -tt- | table | tableau | table d'hôte | | | tactics | tailor-made | take | take aback | take and | take exception to | take food, take meals | take hold of | take it easy | take it under advisement | take meals | taken | take place, occur | take stock in (of) | take thought | talisman | talk | talk | talk shop | tangible | taps | tarry | tart | tartan | taste | tasteful, tasteless, tasty | tattoo | taught, taut | TAUTOLOGY | tax | teach | teacher | team, teem | | teem | teen, adolescent, juvenile, teenager, young adult | tee shirt | telecast, televise | temblor, trembler, tremblor | temerity, timidity | temperature | tempo | temporize | tenant, tenet | tend | tendency | tender | tendinitis, tendonitis | tenet | TENSE | TENSES, SEQUENCE OF | TERMINAL PREPOSITION | terminate | terms | terrible, terribly | TERSENESS | TERTIARY STRESS | tête-à-tête | Teutonic | textual, textural | th | than | than any | thankfully | thanking you in advance | thanks to | than whom | that 1 | that, omitted | that 2, this | that 3, unnecessarily repeated | that 4, which | that 5, which, who, whom | that big of a deal, (not) | that goes without saying | that there, this here | the | theater, theatre | thee | the fact is, the fact of the matter is, the fact that

their, there, they're | theirn | theirs | theirselves, themself | them 1 | them 2 | themself | themselves | then | then | thence | theorize | there | thereabouts, thereafter, thereat, thereby, therefrom, therein, thereof, thereon, thereto, thereupon, therewith | there are | the reason why | therefor, therefore | therefrom, therein | there is, there are | thereof, thereon, thereto, thereupon, therewith | the same as, just as | these kind of, these sort of | thesis | the three R's | the way | they, their, them | they're | they say | thief | thine | thing | think | third, thirdly | THIRD PERSON SINGULAR AND PLURAL | this, that | this here | thither | thitherto | tho, tho' | thorn | thoroughbred, purebred | those kind of, those sort of | thou, thee, thine, thy | though | thought, to take | THOUGHTFUL WRITER | thoughtless | three last | three R's, the | thrill, thrilled | thrive | throng, thronged | through | throughway | throw in the towel | thru | thruput | thrust | thruway, expressway, freeway, interstate, motorway, parkway, throughway | thusly, thus | thy | thyself | -tiate, -tiation | tight, tightly | 'til | TILDE | till, 'til, until | timber, timbre | timely | time period | times more, times less | timidity | tin | | tip, tipster | tirade | tired | TIRED METAPHORS | tits | to 1 | to 2, too, two | to a degree | to all intents and purposes | to-do | together 1 | together 2 | togetherness | together with | to hand | token, by the same | tolerant, tolerance | tomato | tome | tonic | too | took, taken | toothsome, toothy | top 1 | top 2 | topless | tormented | tornado | torpedo | torso | tortuous, torturous | to say the least | total, totally | totality | to the manner (manor) born | to the nth degree | toward, towards | towel, throw in the | to wit | track, tract | trade | TRADE NAMES | TRADITIONAL GRAMMARS | traffic | tragedy | tragic, tragical | transcendent, transcendental, transcendentalism, Transcendentalist | TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR | transient, transitory | TRANSITIVE, INTRANSITIVE VERBS | transitory | translate, transliterate | translucent, opaque, transparent | transmute | transparent | transpire | traumatic, trauma | travesty | tread | treat | treble | trek | trembler, tremblor | tribute | triceps | trillion | triple, treble | triumphal, triumphant | trivia | trod | trooper, trouper | TROPE | trouper | trousers | truculent | true | true facts | truly | trust | trustee, trusty | try | try and | T-shirt, tee shirt | -tt- | tube | tubercular, tuberculous | tummy | turbid, turgid | turnpike | tweeny | twelvemo, 12mo | two | two and two | two-faced | two first | two plus two, two and two | -ty | tycoon | type, -type | U, non-U | uglies, uglify | uglily | ugly, uglies, uglify | uh | | U.K. | ultimate, ultimately | ultimatum | ultra | ultra- | umlaut | umpire | un- | unabridged | unalienable | unapt | UNATTACHED PARTICIPLES | unaware, unawares | unbeknown, unbeknownst | unbend, unbending | UNCHANGING PLURALS OF NOUNS | uncomfortable, uncomfortably | UNCOMPARABLE ADJECTIVES | unconscious | under-

underground | underhanded, underhand, underhandedly | underlay, underlie | underpants | underpass | underprivileged | undershirt | understanding, misunderstanding | UNDERSTATEMENT | UNDERSTOOD | undertaker | under the circumstances | under way, underway, under weigh | underwhelm | undiscriminate, undiscriminating | undoubtedly | undue, unduly | uneatable | uneconomic, uneconomical | unedible | unequal | unequivocally, unequivocably | unexceptionable, unexceptional | unflappable | unhealthful, unhealthy | unhuman | unilateral | uninterest | uninterested | unique | unisex | United Kingdom | United States | unless and until | unlike | unloose, unloosen | unmoral | unnatural | unprecedented | unqualified, disqualified | unquestionably | unravel | unreadable | unrealistic | unreligious | unrepairable, irreparable | unsanitary | unsatisfied | unsavory | unseasonable, unseasonably, unseasonal, unseasonally | unsociable, unsocial | unsolvable, insoluble, insolvable | UNSTRESSED | UNSTRESSED VOWELS, SPELLING OF | unstructured | unthinkable, thoughtless, unthinking | until | untimely | unto | untoward | unwonted, unwanted | up | up against the wall, up the wall | up and | upcoming, incoming, oncoming | upon | upper | UP STYLE, DOWN STYLE | up the pipe | uptight | up until | upward, upwards | Uranus | urban, urbane | URBAN DIALECTS | urbane | U.S., U.S.A. | U.S. AND BRITISH DIFFERENCES IN MEANING, PRONUNCIATION, SPELLING, AND VOCABULARY | us | USA | USAGE 1 | usage 2 | USAGE LEVELS | use | used to | used to could | useful | user- | usherette | utilize | vacant, vacuous | vaccinate, inoculate | vacuity, vacuousness | vacuous | vacuousness | vacuum | vade mecum | vagary | vain, vane, vein | valance, valence | vale 1 | vale 2, veil | valence | valet | value-added, value-added tax | van 1 | van 2 | van 3, von | vane | vanguard | vantage | variance, at | VARIANT PRONUNCIATIONS | VARIANT SPELLINGS | VARIATION, ELEGANT | VARIATION, LINGUISTIC | VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE | various | various and sundry | various different | vary | vase | vastly | vast majority | 've | veggie | vehement, vehicular, vehemence, vehicle | veil | vein | venal, venial | vengeance | venial | venison | venom, poison, poisonous, venomous | venture | venue | verbal, oral, orally, verbally | VERBALIZATION OF NUMBERS | VERBAL NOUN | VERBALS | verbiage | VERBIFIED NOUNS | verbose, verbosely, verbosity | VERB PHRASE | VERBS | VERBS, PRINCIPAL PARTS OF | veritable | vermin | VERNACULAR | verse, stanza | verso | | vertical | very | very spit of | vest 1 | vest 2 | vet | veto | via | viable | vial, viol | vicar | vice, vise | vice versa | vicious, viscous | victual, vittles | vie | view | viewers | viewpoint | view with alarm | vigilant | villain, villein | viol | violation | violoncello | VIP | VIRGULE | virile, virilism | VIRTUAL SUBJECT | virtuoso | virus | vis-à-vis | visceral | viscous | vise | visible | visionary | visit, visit with | visitation, visit | visual, visible | vitamin | vittles | viva voce | viz, viz. | VOCABULARY 1: AMERICAN AND BRITISH DIFFERENCES | VOCABULARY 2, LEXICON | VOCABULARY 3: SIZE

vocal chords, vocal cords | VOCALIZED PAUSES AND SPEECH FORMULAS | vocation | VOGUE WORDS | voice 1 | VOICE 2: ACTIVE, PASSIVE | VOICED AND VOICELESS SPEECH SOUNDS | void | von | | VOWELS, THE AMERICAN ENGLISH | VULGAR, VULGARITY | VULGAR ENGLISH, VULGATE | vulnerable | waffle | wage | waist, waste | waistcoat, weskit | wait, await | wait on, wait upon | waive, wave | waiver, waver | wake, waken | wall, (up) against the, with one's back to the wall, go to the wall for, off the wall, to drive (someone) up the wall | wane | wangle, wrangle | want | want down, want in, want into, want off, want out, want up | want for | want in, want into, want off, want out | want that | want up | -ward, -wards | warm, warmly | warn | warp, web, weft, woof | wary | was, were | wash up, washed up, wash one's hands | waste | watch | watershed | wave | waver | wax | way 1 | way 2 | way, no | way, under; under weigh | ways | we | weak, week | WEAK VERBS | wealthy | wean | WEASEL WORDS | weather, whether | weave | web | wed | | weep, cry, sob | weft | weird | welch, welcher | well | well | well-nigh | welsh, welch, Welsh, welch, welsh, welcher, welsher | Welsh rabbit, Welsh rarebit | were | weskit | west, West, westerly, western, Western | western | WESTERN REGIONAL DIALECT | westward, westwards | wet | wh- | wharf | what | what clauses | whatever | whatsoever | when, where | when and if | whence | whenever | when worse (worst) comes to worst | where | where, when | -where | whereabouts | where … at, where … to | whereas | whereat, whereupon | whereby | wherefore | wherein | whereof | whereon | where … to | whereupon | wherever | wherewithal | whether | whether or not, whether or no | which | which, and | while | whilom | whilst | whiskey, whisky | white-collar | white paper | whither | who, whom | whodunit | who else's | whoever, whomever | whole new ball game | wholly | whom | whomever | whopping, whopper | who's, whose | why | whys and wherefores | widow, widower | wife | wilful | will | willful, wilful | win | wind | wind shear | windward | wink | winner | -wise | wish, wish for | with | withal | with a view, with the view | within | with one's back to the wall | without | without charge, without cost | without doubt | without hardly | with regard(s) to | with respect to | with the company (corporation, firm) | with the exception of | with the hope of, with the hope that | witness | wizen, wizened | wolf | woman | womanly | wonder | wonk | wont | won't | wood, woods | woof | wop | WORD CHOICE | WORDINESS, PROLIXITY | WORD ORDER | WORDS AS WORDS | WORDY | work | worldly | worse comes to worst, if (when) | worser | worst comes to worst, if (when) | worst way, in the | worthwhile | would | woulda | would have | would of | would rather | wrack | wrangle | wrapped | wrath, wrathful, wroth | wreak, wreck | wreath, wreathe | wreck | wright | writ | write | write-up | wrong, wrongly | wroth | wrought | X 1 | X 2 | Xanadu

bartleby141
The Elements of Style

• Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's
• In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last
• Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas
• Place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause
• Do not join independent clauses by a comma
• Do not break sentences in two
• A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject
• Divide words at line-ends, in accordance with their formation and pronunciation

• Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic
• As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning
• Use the active voice
• Put statements in positive form
• Omit needless words
• Avoid a succession of loose sentences
• Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
• Keep related words together
• In summaries, keep to one tense
• Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end

bartleby185
The American Language
An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States

• I. Introductory
• 1. The Diverging Streams of English
• 2. The Academic Attitude
• 3. The View of Writing Men
• 4. Foreign Observers
• 5. The General Character of American English
• 6. The Materials of the Inquiry

• 1. The First Differntiation
• 2. Sources of Early Americanisms
• 3. New Words of English Material
• 4. Changed Meaning
• 5. Archaic English Words
• 6. Colonial Pronunciation

• 1. Character of the New Nation
• 2. The Language in the Making
• 3. The Expanding Vocabulary
• 4. Loan-Words and Non-English Influences
• 5. Pronunciation Before the Civil War

• 1. The Two Vocabularies
• 2. Differences in Usage
• 3. Honorifics

• 1. Americanisms in England
• 2. Briticisms in the United States

• 1. General Characters
• 2. Lost Distinctions
• 3. Processes of Word-Formation
• 4. Foreign Influences Today

• 1. General Characters
• 2. The Vowels

• 1. The Two Orthographies
• 2. The Influence of Webster
• 3. The Advance of American Spelling
• 4. British Spelling in the United States
• 5. Simplified Spelling
• 6. The Treatment of Loan-Words
• 7. Minor Differences

• 1. Grammarians and Their Ways
• 2. Spoken American As It Is
• 3. The Verb
• 4. The Pronoun
• 5. The Adverb
• 6. The Noun
• 7. The Adjective
• 8. The Double Negative
• 9. Other Syntactical Peculiarities
• 10. Vulgar Pronunciation

• 1. Surnames
• 2. Given Names
• 3. Geographical Names
• 4. Street Names

• 1. Its Origin and Nature
• 2. War Slang

• 1. The Declaration of Independence in American
• 2. Baseball-American
• 3. Ham-American
• 4. Vers Américain

• 1. German
• 1. French
• 2. Spanish
• 3. Yiddish
• 4. Italian
• 5. Dano-Norwegian
• 6. Swedish
• 7. Dutch
• 8. Icelandic
• 9. Greek
• 10. The Slavic Languages

bartleby186
An Introduction to the Study of Speech

bartleby190
On the Art of Writing

• Inaugural
• The Practice of Writing
• On the Difference between Verse and Prose
• On the Capital Difficulty of Verse
• On the Capital Difficulty of Prose
• Some Principles Reaffirmed
• On the Lineage of English Literature (I)
• On the Lineage of English Literature (II)
• English Literature in Our Universities (I)
• English Literature in Our Universities (II)
• On Style

bartleby191
On the Art of Reading

• Introductory
• Apprehension versus Comprehension
• Children’s Reading (I)
• Children’s Reading (II)
• On Reading for Examinations
• On a School of English
• The Value of Greek and Latin in English Literature
• On Reading the Bible (I)
• On Reading the Bible (II)
• On Reading the Bible (III)
• Of Selection
• On the Use of Masterpieces

Bering Strait Inupiatun
Language of US
Sprache von USA

Bering Strait Yupik
Language of US
Sprache von USA

blogspot.com - SbaCL
Separated by a Common Language

About Lynneguist

Hi, I’m Lynne Murphy. When I'm at work, I'm Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex. (Here's where I have to say: the views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Sussex.)

Since 2006, my alter ego Lynneguist has used this blog to explore the often subtle differences in American and British English. At first this was a distraction from the linguistic research I do at my day job, but increasingly my professional work has been inspired by the topics here.
...

Corsican (W3)
Language of US
Sprache in US

...
Region Corsica, Paris, Marseilles. Also spoken in Bolivia, Canada, Cuba, Italy, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela.
...

dictionary.com
Language - Posts

• Are There Any Words Without Rhymes?
• What rhymes with orange? Orange rhymes with Blorenge (a mountain in Wales) and sporange (a technical word for a sac where spores are made). Of course, if you want to write a rhyming poem about oranges, the scientific or geographic research involved might be a little tough. What rhymes with silver? While we’re at it, while silver hangs on to the same rumor, it actually rhymes with Wilver (a nickname) and chilver (a ewe …
• Is It “Just Deserts” Or “Just Desserts”?
• Did the dictionary … get it wrong?! We once featured the word comeuppance as our Word of the Day. Comeuppance, as we define it, means “deserved reward or just deserts, usually unpleasant.” More than a few of our brilliant and devoted users, wrote in to inform us that there was a typo in the definition: just deserts should be just desserts. Was an S left out of …
• When To Use Motherland vs. Fatherland
• The terms motherland and fatherland both refer to one’s native country, one’s country of origin, or the home of one’s ancestors. So, what’s the difference between motherland and others fatherland? What are the origins of motherland and fatherland? Whether a particular group uses (their language’s equivalent of, if they have one) motherland or fatherland is a matter of culture, tradition, or, in some instances, personal preference. In …
• Kangaroo Words: Words That Contain Their Own Synonyms
• What’s The Difference Between “Piqued,” “Peeked,” And “Peaked?”
• English has a rich, extensive vocabulary. Problem is, sometimes those words run into each other, resulting in a tangled set of homophones , words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings. The word set we’re examining today can send writers into a spiral of uncertainty when it comes to word choice, particularly in the context of one expression: piqued my interest, peaked my …
• What Does It Mean To Be “Charged,” “Convicted,” And “Sentenced” For A Crime
• Three verbs that mean similar things: charge, convict, and sentence. They appear in the news constantly, but do you know what each term actually describes? What does charged mean? Let’s begin with charge. When a person is charged with a crime, a formal allegation (a statement not yet proven) of an offense is made. We typically refer to charges in the context of criminal law, which concerns crimes considered …
• Don’t Get Tripped Up By These Ten Tricky Homophones
• March 14 marks one of the geekiest days on the calendar. But, some people might confuse it for one of the tastiest. It’s Pi Day. Not pie, but pi (II, p), the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet. In mathematics, the character is used to represent a constant—the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter—which is approximately 3.14159+. While the infinitely long …
• Does “Bimonthly” Mean Twice A Month Or Every Two Months?
• Both! Bimonthly can refer to something happening “every two months” or “twice a month.” Yep, bimonthly has, fittingly enough, two meanings. What does bi– mean? The prefix bi- means “two,” from the Latin bis, “twice.” A bimonthly publication can come out two times a month (on the second and last Friday, for instance) or every two months (January, then March, then May, and so on). Now, what if your …
• What Is A Collective Noun?
• A collective noun refers to a type of noun that encompasses “a whole group as a single entity” as well as the members of that group. It is considered singular in form. For example, words like faculty , herd , and team are collective nouns—they’re singular words but represent a group. There are collective nouns for people, animals, objects, and concepts. Collective nouns differ from mass nouns …
• The Origin (And Grammar) Of Father’s Day
• While Mother’s Day became an official holiday in 1914, Father’s Day took a little longer to be considered a national holiday. And its origin, sadly, lies in two, unrelated tragic events. How did Father’s Day begin? About six months after the Monongah mining disaster of 1907, in which the small West Virginia town lost over 350 men, Grace Golden Clayton organized an event to honor the …
• How To Format And Cite A Word And Definition
• There are different ways to format and cite a word and definition according to different manuals of style. The main thing to do is be consistent. What are some general rules for formatting? It is important to offset the term that is being defined or discussed, usually by italicizing it (underline it if you can’t). This is to prevent any confusion that might occur if the …
• What Is The Difference Between “Anyway,” “Anyways,” And “Any Way”?
• Which word is it, anyway? Anyway is a common adverb used to mean “in any case,” while any way is an adjective-noun phrase that means “whichever path” or “in any manner.” Anyways is the informal form of anyway. While less common in formal writing, anyways abounds in everyday speech or dialogue. It often signals a transition. Anyway Anyway, used as an adverb, suggests a disregard …
• What’s The Difference Between “Imminent,” “Immanent,” And “Eminent”?
• When something is imminent , that means it’s “impending.” Immanent isn’t a typo; it means “inherent.” And, e minent means “distinguished.” Now that that is cleared up … how do you use each of these in a sentence? How to use imminent in a sentence Imminent means “likely to occur at any moment or impending.” It refers to something that’s approaching, about to happen, anticipated, or …
• Why Do “Flammable” And “Inflammable” Mean The Same Thing?
• English is a trickster of a language, evidenced by the fact that two words that appear to be antonyms can actually mean the exact same thing. However, every once in a while we come across a pair of words that it really would be better to not confuse. A fine example of this is flammable and inflammable . Why are these two words so confusing? Well, flammable …
• Is There A Difference Between A “Symphony,” “Orchestra,” And “Philharmonic”?
• If you want to see some live classical music, you could go to the New York Philharmonic, for instance, or the Chicago Symphony. Are they the same? Are they different? Why is English so confusing? OK, we are going to stop playing the world’s smallest violin and get to the base—er, bass—of it. First, what is an orchestra? An orchestra is “a group of performers …
• Does “None” Take A Singular Or Plural Verb?
• One is singular, and so takes a singular verb, e.g., There is only one slice of pizza left or One is wise to share. So, none should be singular, too? Not so fast. None can take a singular or plural verb. Why?! First, what is none? At its most basic level, none means “not one (of something).” It comes from Old English nan, which is equivalent …
• Are There Any Words That Use “W” As A Vowel?
• A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y … and W? Yes, the letter W can behave as a vowel. It’s time to level up your Scrabble game, people. And, to all our grade-school peeps out there, get ready to knock the socks off your Spelling teacher. First, what is a vowel? A, E, I, O, U, Y, and, as we’ll see, W, are called vowels, but let’s …
• English Affixes From A To Z: A One-Stop List Of Suffixes, Prefixes, and Combining Forms
• In English, we love to make new words by adding all sorts of bits to the front and back of existing terms. These are called affixes , and they are added to the base or stem of a word. When attached to the end of word, the affix is called a suffix . And to the beginning? A prefix . Then there are combining forms …
• What’s The Difference Between “Discreet” And “Discrete”?
• Ah, another confusing pair of homophones (words that sound alike but are different in meaning). And, we’re not going to be discreet about it: these two can be confusing. So, let’s try to keep them discrete. What does discreet mean? Discreet means “judicious in one’s conduct or speech, especially with regard to respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature.” Or, more …
• What Is MLA Style?
• MLA style refers the style recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA) for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers. It concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and, especially, documentation of sources. What is the MLA? Founded in 1883, the MLA is a leading academic professional organization in the US that promotes scholarship of languages and literature. Aside from its major …
• Where Does The Phrase “Cut The Mustard” Come From?
• As with many slang and idiomatic phrases, the origin of cut the mustard isn’t so … clear-cut. But, let’s see if we can’t crack this etymological jar open just a bit. What does “cut the mustard” mean? To cut the mustard is “to reach or surpass the desired standard or performance” or more generally “to succeed, to have the ability to do something.” For instance, Beyoncé …
• How Did The Month Of June Get Its Name?
• June is a great month. School’s out. The days are long. The weather’s warm. Perhaps the Anglo-Saxons—who spoke that linguistic ancestor of English known as Old English—were onto something when they collectively called June and July Liða. That’s pronounced like [lee–thuh], with the character ð having the voiced th-, like this. Liða itself may mean “calm” or “mild.” On its own, June was sometimes also referred to as Ærra-Liða, which is like …
• Fiancé vs. Fiancée: Which One Is Which?
• Fiancé and fiancée are different words? If you’ve ever wondered whether it was spelled fiancé or fiancée , well, they’re both correct. They’re both correct because they are actually different terms. English borrowed them from variants of the French verb fiancer (meaning “to get engaged”) in the mid-19th century. The masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée) noun forms were both imported by English speakers, even though English doesn’t typically use gendered …
• Practice vs. Practise
• If you’ve ever wondered why it’s spelled practice in some contexts and practise in others, it mainly comes down to British versus American spelling. In British English, which is also called International English, practise is a verb and practice is a noun. American English tends to avoid practise altogether, using practice as both the noun and verb form. The noun practice As a noun, practice means a “habit or …
• Why Did “Noon” Used To Mean 3:00?
• To most, the word noon signifies a specific time of day–namely, 12:00 midday (aka “lunchtime”). But, surprisingly, the term noon wasn’t always shorthand for midday at 12:00; in fact, it used to refer to a different time of day altogether. First, some history. Clocks and watches are relatively new inventions. Though some timekeeping devices, like sundials and water clocks, have been used for thousands of years, …
• Advice vs. Advise
• Why are advice and advise so similar? It’s no wonder that advice and advise are often confused; they are used in similar contexts and are separated by just one letter. But, that letter signals important distinctions to keep in mind when using the terms. So, what are the differences between the two? What are the differences between advise and advice? Advise is a verb meaning “to give counsel to; offer an opinion …
• “Infamous” vs. “Notorious”: Why Is There A Difference?
• Thanks to clicks, likes, and verified blue checkmarks, a person’s reputation can extend far beyond those who know them personally. For example, it’s widely known that Chris Evans is a real-life Captain America who holds doors open for people, and we all acknowledge that Beyoncé is a goddess among us mere mortals. Some people, though, have a reputation that precedes them in less positive ways. …
• Why Do We Capitalize The Pronoun “I”?
• Even though it feels natural to English speakers, capitalizing I is unusual. In fact, English is the only language that does it. Germanic and Romantic languages typically have some conventions for capitalizing proper nouns, like Deutschland (in German) or Place de la Concorde (in French), but English is the only one that insists on capitalizing the personal pronoun. Still don’t think it’s weird … then …
• How Do You Change Passive Voice Into Active Voice?
• In active voice , the subject performs the action of the verb. In passive voice , the subject receives the action of the verb. If you feel like you need a little more than that, keep reading. What is passive voice? The subject of a sentence is the person or thing that sentence is about. The passive voice is when an action happens to the …
• Blond vs. Blonde: What’s The Difference?
• Grammatical gender* is an unfamiliar concept to some native English speakers. If you’re learning a language like Spanish, for instance, one of the earliest lessons is that some nouns are feminine (la mesa for “the table”) and others masculine (el café for “coffee”). Gendered words are part of many other languages around the world, too, but not so much in English—or are they? Believe it or not, English …
• What’s It Called When You Misinterpret Lyrics?
• What is a mondegreen? Have you ever heard someone sing the wrong lyrics to a song? Maybe a child gave the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” a new meaning by replacing the line “life is but a dream” with “life’s a butter dream.” Or maybe you’ve unironically belted out “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” instead of Jimi Hendrix’s intended lyrics, “Excuse me …
• Stop Wasting Breath By Saying These Repetitive Phrases
• How Do You Use The Word “Myriad” In A Sentence?
• From college admissions to carbon emissions, it seems society these days is facing a myriad of challenges … or is it myriad challenges? Thanks, myriad. As if we don’t have enough to deal with. Most of us have heard of the word myriad … but can you use it in a sentence? Well, we’re going help make at least one thing simpler and get to the bottom of …
• Did You Know How This Word Was Formed?
• Words are funny things. For one thing, they are always changing. Consider lit , which, conventionally, refers to “lighting something up, e.g., a lit candle.” But, in slang, lit means something is “excellent.” It’s hot, it’s on fire—which are just more examples of how we play with words. For another, they keep secret stories of the past. Did you know daisy literally means “day’s eye,” named for …
• Words You Didn’t Know Were Inspired By Animals
• Did you know that the word "muscle" is derived from the Latin word for “mouse?” And this isn't the only word in the English language that is unexpectedly inspired by animals.
• “Compliment” vs. “Complement”: How To Pick The Right Word
• Compliment and complement are commonly confused terms because they’re pronounced alike and originally shared some meanings. But over time, they’ve become separate words with entirely different definitions. What does complement mean? Complement with an E is the older of the two terms. Its noun sense has been around in English since the 1300s. The term derives from the Latin complementum, meaning “something that completes.” So, that means if …
• The Month Of March And “Marching” Have A Historical Link
• Where did the name March come from? The name March is derived from the Latin word Martius (named after Mars, the Roman god of war). Martius was the name of the first month in the Roman calendar. It is one of the only months named after a god. While many have adopted the Gregorian calendar (The Roman ruler, Numa Pompilius, added January and February to the calendar thus making March the …
• Why Do Brits And Americans Spell Words Differently?
• Brits and Americans may share a mother tongue, but when it comes to spelling a handful of common terms, we just can’t seem to settle on a shared favorite—or is it favourite?—approach. Thankfully, most words in English are spelled the same wherever the language is spoken. But a select few take different spellings on opposite sides of the Atlantic. These are some of the most common discrepancies …
• Why Do We Use Onomatopoeia?
• Few words are as fun to say as onomatopoeia, but what the heck does it mean? Despite its complex look and sound, onomatopoeia actually has a simple function in the English language. It’s defined as “the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.” To put it simply, it’s a word …
• Cough, Cough: Here Are 10 Different Ways To Say “-ough”
• Dissent vs. Protest: Why Choosing The Right Word Matters
• It seems political conflict in the 2010s has put the words dissent and protest at the center of our vocabulary. More and more, people are speaking out against injustices, voicing opposition to things they disagree with, and organizing to effect change. But, even though dissent and protest are both terms that people can use to describe such forms of disagreement and discontent, they don’t mean the same thing. What is …
• What Is The Difference Between “Gender” And “Sex”?
• When two words have the same meaning, we call them synonyms . When two words have different meanings but people use them interchangeably, we write articles about what those words actually mean. Take gender and sex. While people substitute one for the other on the regular, their meaning and usage are significantly—and consequentially—different. Because we’re most often talking about human beings when we use these …
• Do Zoologists Pick Animal Names Like “Pink Fairy Armadillo”?
• Dictionary.com’s Top 10 Grammar Tips
• Read on to see what we consider the top 10 grammar rules to remember. Maybe you'll like grammar a little more afterwards.
• What’s The Word For When You Can’t Remember A Word?
• The word was there a second ago. You were just about to say it. And then poof, it was gone, like a gnat buzzing just out of your reach when you’re about to smack it mid-air. So what the heck is going on. Is there a word to describe what you meant to say when you just can’t remember that word? Well, yes! It was …
• Why We Need The Serial Comma: 10 Hilarious Real-World Examples
• New Year’s vs. New Year: How To Ring In The Year With Good Grammar
• As if the words to “Auld Lang Syne” weren’t difficult enough to remember, ringing in a brand-new year comes with some particularly befuddling grammar landmines. Of course, the punctuation we use when talking about the New Year’s holiday couldn’t do us a solid and follow the same pattern as Veterans Day (note the lack of apostrophe), because … well, that’s the English language for you. …
• Do You Give Presents Or Gifts? Here’s The Difference
• Where do the words gift and present come from? Why does English use both? We’re pretty sure it’s not just so that children can ask for toys in multiple ways… Language is not a linear, predestined development. Even though it may feel as if the language we speak is in some way the logical conclusion of thousands of years of development, every word that we …
• The X In Xmas Is Really About Jesus Christ
• Here’s a holiday surprise that only the dictionary can provide. Do you find the word Xmas, as an abbreviation for Christmas, offensive? Many people do, but the origin of this controversial term might change your mind! You won’t find Xmas in church songbooks or even on many greeting cards. Xmas is popularly associated with a trend toward materialism and is, sometimes, the target of people who …
• Why Was Z Removed From The Alphabet (And Then Put Back)?
• Poor lonely Z finishes up the alphabet at number 26. But, that’s not the only insult this lonely letter suffers! Z’s history includes a time when it was so infrequently used that it was removed from the alphabet altogether. Where did Z come from? The Greek zeta is the origin of the humble Z. The Phoenician glyph zayin , meaning “weapon,” had a long vertical line …
• Is It “I Wish I Were” Or “I Wish I Was”?
• Picture it. You’re texting your buddy, and you type out “I wish I were.” But there’s that pesky autocorrect, trying to change it to “I wish I was.” Is autocorrect ducking with you, or are you about to commit a grammar faux pas? First, a little grammar lesson … Were and was are both past tense versions of the verb to be . But were …
• How To Make Your Last Name Plural (And Keep The Grammarians Off Your Back)
• If writing out your holiday cards or ordering a sign for the front of your house makes you break out in hives, you may know a few grammar sticklers who like to poke fun. You know the type: The people who own stock in red ink manufacturing and are quick to point out when you’ve misused that apostrophe and inappropriately pluralized your last name. But …
• What’s The Difference Between “i.e.” And “e.g.”?
• What’s the difference between i.e. and e.g.? They may be small, but their power to befuddle writers and speakers of the English language is mighty. The term i.e. is a shortening of the Latin expression id est, which translates to “that is.” It is used to introduce a rephrasing or elaboration on something that has already been stated. The term e.g. is an abbreviation of …
• Explain The Difference Between Enemy And Nemesis
• Who do you think would win an epic showdown like this one? We often see these words used interchangeably, but there are some subtle differences between them. An enemy is a foe who’s hostile toward the protagonist (or central character) of a story. A nemesis is an opponent or rival whom a protagonist can’t overcome. The Enemy In literature, an enemy is often referred to …
• Why Capitalization Matters When You Write Native American
• These days, social media is glut with excited folks who are sending off their cheek swabs to find out just what’s hiding in their DNA. Will they find out they had an ancestor on the Mayflower? Or, maybe there was a Native American who played a role in their genes along the way. That would make them Native American too, right? Well, the definition of …
• Is Veterans Day A Big Grammar Mistake?
• What do apostrophes have to do with this federal holiday? Well, there’s a confusing apostrophe in Veterans’ Day—or is there? Veterans Day is often incorrectly written as “Veteran’s Day” or “Veterans’ Day.” But, in fact, it’s apostrophe free. “Veteran’s Day” would definitely be incorrect because it means a day for only one veteran. While “Veterans’ Day” does encompass multiple veterans, that spelling is incorrect according …
• What’s The Difference Between Morals And Ethics?
• Maybe you’ve heard these terms and wondered what the difference is. A lot of people think of them as being the same thing. While they’re closely related concepts, morals refer mainly to guiding principles, and ethics refer to specific rules and actions, or behaviors. A moral precept is an idea or opinion that’s driven by a desire to be good. An ethical code is a …
• Who Is Wednesday Named For?
• Where did the name Wednesday come from? Surprise, surprise … Wednesday Addams wasn’t the originator of the name. In fact, the name Wednesday actually derives from two mighty but distinct gods. The Old English word for Wednesday indicates that the day was named for the Germanic god Woden. In Romance languages, the name is derived from the Roman god Mercury. (For example, Wednesday is mercredi in French and miercuri …
• What’s The Difference Between Socialism And Communism?
• Socialism has three main meanings: 1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. 2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory. 3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by …
• Ghost Words That Are Haunting The Dictionary
• What’s The Difference Between Mistrust And Distrust?
• Trust us on this one. There’s a difference between these two. Distrust is a complete lack of trust, and it’s often based on experience. Mistrust is a general lack of trust or confidence, sometimes based on instinct. Both words can be used as either verbs or nouns. As adjectives, they’re distrustful and mistrustful, respectively. Distrust tends to be used far more frequently than mistrust. What …
• Can You Use All 8 Types Of Pronouns?
• We talk a lot about pronouns today, especially she/hers, he/him, and of course the age-old palaver over the singular they. But, if you’re really going to dig into your pronouns, shouldn’t you know all the types that are out there? We’re here to help. Certain types of pronouns closely relate to one another, and many words can function as multiple different types of pronouns, depending …
• Empathy vs. Sympathy: Which Word To Use And When
• How are empathy and sympathy the same? The terms empathy and sympathy are often confused and with good reason. Both of the words deal with the relationship a person has to the feelings and experiences of another person. So, let’s explore the differences between these terms and how they are most commonly used. Both sympathy and empathy have roots in the Greek term páthos meaning “suffering, feeling.” What …
• Why Does The Letter Q Almost Always Need The Letter U?
• Scrabble players are acutely aware that Q is a tricky letter. To use a Q in the game, a player must also find an available U . The fact that Q is the second most rarely used letter in the alphabet certainly doesn’t make using Q any easier. Let’s quest toward resolving the questions of quarrelsome Q, the 17th letter in the alphabet. How do …
• Master The Secrets Of Crosswordese
• Are you a cruciverbalist ? A lover of crosswords? If you can immediately recite a long list of obscure words with an excessive amount of vowels, you’re probably an avid crossword solver. And, this set of vocabulary that is full of words more likely to fill in your morning puzzle rather than your everyday conversation is commonly known as crosswordese. Crosswordese words are used by …
• Who Wrote The Alphabet Song?
• Whether you learned your ABCs while hanging out with the gang from Sesame Street, from someone in your family, or you were schooled in everything from A to Z in "kindergarten", you probably learned the alphabet with the help of the alphabet song. The clever tune is imprinted in the brains of most of us English speakers. When you look up a word in the …
• Who wrote the alphabet song?
• Whether you learned your ABCs on Sesame Street, from your grandmother, or in kindergarten, you probably learned them. The clever tune is imprinted in the brains of most of us English speakers. When you look up a word in a print dictionary, you may still sing the song to yourself to remember if L is before J or not. We take the song for granted …
• Who wrote the alphabet song?
• ?February 21, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Language ?172 Comments
• Whether you learned your ABCs on Sesame Street, from your grandmother, or in kindergarten, you probably learned them. The clever tune is imprinted in the brains of most of us English speakers. When you look up a word in a print dictionary, you may still sing the song to yourself to remember if L is [...]
• When To Use A vs. An
• There are all sorts of grammar rules out there. But, one of the most basic is determining when you should use the very first letter of the alphabet. Do you know when to use a vs. when you should use an? Let’s break this one down! A vs. an The rule is: Use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound (not letter). It doesn’t matter how the …
• Which Words Should You Capitalize In A Title?
• Titles can be confusing—either due to length (we’re looking at you, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet), punctuation (Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood), or content (sigh, 2002’s Mr. Mom). But, titles can also stump readers and writers across the board due to title case—conventions of which words in a sentence start with capital letters. Have no fear: We’ll walk you through the steps, one …
• Are There Any English Words That Have No Vowels?
• It’s a question that just about every English learner has asked: “Are there any English words that have no vowels?” The answer to this depends what you mean by “vowel” and “word.” There are two things we mean by the word vowel : a speech sound made with the vocal tract open or a letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel. Words with …
• What Is Phonetic Spelling?
• Spelling is how we put words together, but what is phonetic spelling? An alternate way to create words? Well, yes! Phonetic spelling vs. phonetic pronunciation Phonetic spelling is the representation of vocal sounds which express pronunciations of words. It is a system of spelling in which each letter represents invariably the same spoken sound. Some schools may use phonetic pronunciations to help children learn the spelling of difficult …
• Is There Such A Thing As A True Synonym?
• Thesauruses present a catalog of synonyms from which we may pick and choose words to put into our writing, but a thesaurus used alone is a very bad thing because there is no such thing as a true synonym . Every word has its particular place in the language. How do synonyms work? To present a group of words that allegedly say the same thing, …
• The Longest Words In The English Language
• Two Nerdy Steps To Take To Improve Your Vocabulary
• When we asked this woman the difference between lay and lie ... she couldn't answer right away. Maybe her nerdy steps to learn how to use these words will help you learn the difference between lay and lie too?
• Moribund: Visual Word of the Day
• Learn more about this Word of the Day here.
• Inertia vs. Momentum: Which Keeps You Moving?
• Science is real. Science is cool. Science uses a lot of terms that we all think we know. But, do we really know what we are talking about? In the spirit of scientific community and understanding, let’s clear up one big scientific misconception that we all get wrong … Pop quiz: Is it momentum or inertia that keeps you moving? Here’s a hint: In science, …
• What Does “Wag the Dog” Mean?
• If you aren’t immersed in politics on the daily, through social media, the news, or just casual conversation, you might not be aware that the phrase wag the dog has become pretty poignant political jargon. But, how did it end up in the political lexicon and where did this seemingly innocent-sounding idiom come from? Below is our rendition of the brief history of the word trends …
• Common Words With Uncommon Opposites
• As we all know every lone sock has a long-lost twin, some words we use every day also have pairs that we just forgot about. Here are some of the English language’s best uncommon opposites.
• Soccer Terms For When The World Cup Is The Only Thing On TV
• Words That Are Their Own Opposites
• English is weird. A word can mean two opposite things ... but that's also what makes English fun.
• The United States Of Diversity: Fargo And Its NCVS Don’tcha Know
• by Taneesh Khera Dictionary.com’s United States of Diversity You’ve stumbled onto our United States of Diversity series, welcome! If you don’t already know, here we explore a minority language or dialect in the country, and this episode’s no different. Does your keeat sit an the meeat? Or, maybe you wait for the boss down the black? Do you cal your mam an Sundays? If you …
• We’re All Guilty Of Phubbing … Here’s Why
• Are you spending more time with your phone than your loved ones? Words matter . . . especially in the bedroom. Phubbing is the habit of snubbing someone because you love your phone more than them. If you choose to phub, you get no love. This PSA is brought to you by Dictionary.com
• Misogyny vs. Sexism
• With the recent #MeToo and Times Up movements, equality and the empowerment of women have become household conversations around the world. Everyone from your next-door neighbor to your favorite high-school teacher have likely joined the discussion, using a brand new set of vocabulary including the words misogyny and sexism . While these two terms may seem similar, there are actually several differences that make them …
• Ode To The Schwa
• How do I love thee? Let me count the schwas. Not exactly what Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in Sonnet 43, but we like it all the same. Why? Because it finally pays tribute to the most frequent vowel sound in English: the schwa. What is the schwa and how does it sound? Simply put, the schwa is a reduced, neutral vowel sound written as an …
• “Daylight Savings Time” And More Commonly Mixed-Up Words
• Every March and November, most Americans change their clocks to keep up with the switch into or out of daylight-saving time. This practice of advancing the clocks ahead an hour is called daylight-saving time. But, because daylight savings time is used so frequently, the term is also considered acceptable. Daylight saving time means that since the clock is moved ahead one hour, you get one …
• Do You Know What These Weird Plurals Mean?
• Have you ever wondered how to pluralize some of the most common words you use everyday? Some plural forms are pretty strange . . . and most people don’t know them. Take our quiz below to see if you’re up on some of the most obscure plural words in the English language. If the quiz doesn’t display, please tryopeningin the Chrome browser.
• A Smack Of Jellyfish And Other Strange Animal Groups
• What do hunting and sexual desires have in common? We could point to several things, but from a linguistic point of view, we’re referring to the archaic word venery , which means both hunting (from the Latin venor) and sexual desire (from Latin veneria, referring to Venus). Strangely, terms of venery is a collective noun that means a group of animals. And, many of these …
• Where Did African American Vernacular English Come From?
• Dictionary.com’s United States of Diversity series by Taneesh Khera Welcome back to our United States of Diversity series, where we travel the country exploring the minority languages, dialects, and people that live here. In this episode, we’re happy to give you our tribute to African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Also called Black English or Ebonics , a blend of the words ebony and phonics, AAVE …
• The United States Of Diversity: Louisiana Creole
• Welcome to Dictionary.com’s United States of Diversity series by Taneesh Khera Here, we explore the minority languages of this country and the people who use them. To linguists, no dialect is better than another. They all have merit, since they’ve all emerged from cultural peculiarities unique to the region and its people. Join us in this series, for a trip around the country as we …
• Cozy Words For A Cold Day
• Spice Up Your Sexy Language
• Where The Bleep Did That Curse Word Come From?
• Nutritional vs. Healthy
• You’ll often see these two words in the same paragraph or even the same sentence, and at first glance, it seems natural that healthy and nutritional would go hand-in-hand. But, a closer examination reveals the true scope of each word, and a better understanding may help you make better food choices. (No judgment. Some of us are still holding on to our love of a certain breakfast cereal …
• A Look At American Sign Language
• What is ASL or American Sign Language? American Sign Language, or ASL, is the visual signing language used by the Deaf community in the United States. English speakers in Canada and in a handful of other counties use ASL, too. Interestingly, those countries include the Philippines, Singapore, Jamaica, China, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, and Bolivia—a varied group. There are other sign languages …
• The Irritating History Of ALL CAPS
• What’s up with ALL CAPS? You’re reading an email from a friend one morning, casually sipping a cup of joe, when all of a sudden, BAM. There it is. “I’ve been working WAY TOO MUCH lately, but I’m hanging in there. Dinner Friday?” Wait a minute is that— *Gasp* IT IS. AGH! ALL CAPS! Is that how you’d react in IRL? Probably not, but for …
• These Common Words Have Some Very Uncommon Opposites
• The Dirtiest Words . . . That Aren’t
• Taser: A Surprising Acronym With An Unsettling Story
• Many people might be surprised to learn that the word taser is an acronym. The (debatable) non-lethal weapon that causes temporary paralysis was invented in the 1970s by a man named Jack Cover (who worked for NASA at one point). Cover aimed to create a non-lethal weapon that could be used in situations in which firing a real gun would prove fatal, like in an airplane hijacking. …
• Don’t Get Into Double Trouble With Double Negatives
• What’s a double negative? A double negative is when two negative words or constructions are used within a single clause . Sentences with double negatives are not grammatically correct . . . and they’re confusing. That’s because double negatives cancel each other out and make a positive. So, when you use a double negative it ends up being the exact opposite of what you mean. …
• Weird Words For Crazy Urges We’ve All Had
• The Good And The Bad: Words That Can’t Choose
• The Torturous Treadmill And Other Exercise Name Origins
• One of These Words is Not (Exactly) Like the Other
• Weird Obsessions You Never Knew Had A Name
• Digging Up Old Slang For Body Parts
• 8 Common Words You’re Probably Using Incorrectly
• Worldly Ways To Say “Thank You”
• What’s Eggnog?
• What’s in eggnog? Frothy, creamy eggnog is a festive favorite in England, Canada, and America. This winter drink consists of milk, cream, sugar, whipped egg whites, and egg yolks. There are many versions of the drink, using alcohols like rum, brandy, whiskey, and bourbon. And, it often is flavored with everything from molasses to cinnamon to nutmeg to dried pumpkin. Now, there’s even soynog or nutnog, a version of …
• Jalopy And Other Trending Words On Dictionary.com
• December 9–December 14
• No Offense, These Words Used To Be Inoffensive
• Quiz Yourself On The Meanings Of These Names
• What’s Really In A Name? Ever wonder what your name (or your best friend’s name, your significant other’s name, your mom’s name) means? Here’s your chance to find out how well you know the Dictionary.com definition of words that are also people’s names. The game is simple. Read the dictionary definition and match it with the correct word/name. If the quiz doesn’t display, please try …
• Offbeat Literary Genres To Get Lost In
• Holy $#!%: Where Did The Symbolic Swear Come From?
• Why is @#$%&! naughty? When the force of a swear word is too extreme (but some form of cuss must be used) symbolic stand-ins have long been used for lewdness. Suffice it to say, any emotional keyboard-striker can blurt out something that people perceive as a sub for swears. Whether it’s to diminish the force of swear, to get around censorship rules, or maybe just because symbols are @#$%ing cool …
• Spelling Still Matters
• Digital Words With An Analog Past
• What Is An “Interrupter”?
• What’s an interrupter? Interrupters—like this little guy right here—are squeezing into more and more contemporary writing. They’re often the goofy/sarcastic “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” asides writers play with in nonacademic writing and online content. Also called insertions, interrupting phrases, or parenthetical expressions, interrupters are words, phrases, or clauses that break the flow of writing—because if the author feels like it, why not?—to offer additional, can’t-be-held-back, or spur-of-the-moment thoughts …
• How To Use The Em Dash
• What is an em dash? The em dash is an incredibly versatile punctuation mark that can be used instead of parentheses, commas, colons, or quotation marks in a sentence. The em dash (—) sets off a word or clause and adds emphasis. Or, it can signal an interruption (see our article on interrupting sentences for more on that!) or amplification (“expanding”) of an idea. It’s also …
• What Are Mr. And Mrs. Short For?
• What are Mr. and Mrs. short for? History and etiquette tell us that Mister and Missus , known by the contractions Mr. and Mrs., are the proper ways to address men and women. Beneath the surface of these everyday honorifics lies a linguistic glitch though. And, it has created social havoc since “Mrs.” entered mainstream English in the 17th century. Where did Mister and Missus …
• How To Use A Conjunction
• What is a conjunction? A conjunction is a connecting word used to join words, phrases, sentences, and clauses. Conjunctions are often single words (and, but, because). In some cases, they can also be phrases (in any case). The two main types of conjunctions are subordinating and coordinating. There are also correlative conjunctions. What is a subordinating conjunction? A subordinating conjunction connects a dependent clause to an independent …
• Affect vs. Effect: Use The Correct Word Every Time
• Affect or effect? Both of these words are verbs and nouns and their meanings overlap. Very confusing! This slippery duo can send even experienced writers into a spiral of uncertainty. Especially, since many people pronounce them in almost the exact same way. Here’s a basic guideline for affect vs effect: Generally, we use affect as a verb (an action word) and effect as a noun …
• Gambling Terms To Get Ahead
• Warranty Vs. Guarantee
• What’s the difference between warranty and guarantee? A warranty is “a promise or guarantee given.” A warranty is usually a written guarantee for a product, and it holds the maker of the product responsible to repair or replace a defective product or its parts. It is only used as a noun. So, what’s a guarantee ? Basically, it’s the promise included in the formal (and legal) warranty. As a noun, guarantee is “an …
• How To Use Quotation Marks
• What are quotation marks? Quotation marks (” “) are used for direct quotations. A quotation begins and ends with quotation marks: “I am getting worried,” she said, “that he has not called.” This signifies that someone actually said these words. How else are quotation marks used? 1. Quotations marks can be used around expressions to offset (or call them out) from the other text. For example: …
• What’s The Difference Between “A While” And “Awhile”
• What are the difference between a while and awhile? Few word pairs capture the idiosyncrasies (“peculiar characteristics”) of the English language like a while and awhile do. Both of these terms are expressions of time, but one is written with a space while the other is one word. These two terms represent different parts of speech. The two-word expression a while is a noun phrase, consisting of the article a and …
• Judgement Vs. Judgment
• Is judgment spelled with an e? Have you ever seen the word judgment spelled two different ways? Sometimes, it appears as we spelled it here (no e), and other times it appears with an e: judgement. Which one is correct? Well, the short answer is that judgment is the prevailing (“dominant”) spelling. Many think that the difference between judgement and judgment is that the longer version is the British …
• Let’s Pause And Talk About Commas
• What is a comma? You’ve probably heard a lot of things about the comma and may have questions about when to use a comma. A comma (,) signifies a short pause in a sentence. It can also divide clauses (“parts of a sentence”) or items in a list. It is often used to create division or to improve the clarity of a sentence. When to use a comma …
• Everyday Vs. Every Day
• What’s the difference between everyday and every day? Do you eat breakfast every day or everyday? The word everyday describes things that are commonplace or ordinary, and it also answers the question “what kind?” For example, in the sentence “Wear your everyday clothes,” the word everyday tells you what kind of clothing to wear. The phrase every day indicates that something happens each day. It also answers the question “when?” …
• Is It Tis Or ‘Tis?
• What does ‘tis mean? ‘Tis, as in “`tis the season” is an old—very old—contraction of it is. The apostrophe replaces the i in the word it to create ’tis . . . not quite how we create contractions today. According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, the contraction ’tis was a fan favorite in the early 1700s. At this time, it was likely used more often than it’s. Why is ’tis used? ‘Tis is …
• The Scoop Behind These Weird Words For Gossip
• Everyday English Words With Ancient Arabic Roots
• Imply Vs. Infer
• Imply and infer both refer to unspoken communication. The sender of this unspoken message is the one who implies, while the receiver is the one who infers. To imply is to subtly hint at a hidden message that isn’t part of the actual words spoken or written. For example, you can imply that you like someone by sending them flowers. To infer is to read …
• Woof, Blaf, Or Voff? How Animals Speak Across The World
• The Most Confusing Words About Dating And Romance
• What Do “Numpire” and “Ewt” Have in Common?
• These funny-looking words may not be recognizable, but they were the ancestors of our modern-day umpire and newt . So, how did they evolve into their current forms? Because of the pesky letter n, the indefinite article a/an, and the fact that a bunch of English-speakers hundreds of years ago had hearing problems. The bouncing n and rebracketing Words like numpire and ewt underwent a process we’re playfully calling …
• Terms To Know When Making A Deal
• Famous Names That Inspired Common Words
• Whose Vs. Who’s
• What do who’s and whose mean? Whose is the possessive form of the pronoun who, while who’s is a contraction of the words who is or who has. However, many people still find whose and who’s particularly confusing because, in English, an apostrophe followed by an s usually indicates the possessive form of a word. (For example, a purse belonging to a woman is “the woman’s purse.”) Not the case here, though. So, to help clarify further, watch this video that illustrates the …
• Words That Are Older Than You Think
• What’s the #’s Real Name?
• On Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, you tag your friends with the @ symbol and topics with the #. If you see something that says “#WordoftheDay,” the tweet or post has something to do with Word of the Day. And once you click on that marked topic, you’ll likely see all public posts about it. It’s a great tool for finding people who are talking about a …
• Their, There, and They’re
• The trio of their, there, and they’re can flummox writers of all levels. It’s confusing; they are homophones, meaning they have the same pronunciation but differ in meaning and derivation. Even though they sound the same, they aren’t spelled the same . . . and cue the noticeable errors! Let’s explore the correct usages of the three. Their is the possessive case of the pronoun …
• Words That Can Ruin Your Sentence
• Who to Blame for English Spellings!
• Let’s be honest: It’s practically impossible to be a “good” speller in English. The way words are spelled in English just don’t match how they are pronounced. Why, English language, why? Well, we can start by blaming William Caxton and the printing press. Diving into the historical context Let’s begin at the beginning, though: England, 1476. Norman French presence was in decline as the Bubonic Plague …
• Words That Are Their Own Opposites
• English is weird: There are words that can mean two opposite things. Here’s what we mean:
• Compliment vs. Complement | Video
• Do you finish your best friend’s sentences? Are you always saying sweet nothings to the love of your life? We asked video students from Cal Poly to help us visualize the difference between Compliment and Complement. Here’s Alex McCraken’s take on these two words. Craving more about this weird word pair? You can read more about it here.
• Where There’s Warmth, There’s Also Coolth: Long Lost Word Pairs
• Language Deception: Word Pairs You Thought Were Related
• Pens and pencils; male and female. These words sound alike, but they are actually completely unrelated. Thanks, English.
• Warning: These Words Will Make You Feel Something
• Attention writers, word-lovers and saps! If you want words that move you, check these out.
• Y.E.S: These Words Are Acronyms
• Maybe you already knew RADAR actually stands for "radio detecting and ranging," but what about these other acronyms hiding in your everyday speech?
• A Paroxysm of Laughter
•  They say laughter’s contagious… Have you ever burst out laughing for no reason? Or caught your friend’s laughter without knowing why? That is an example of paroxysm. Although it can come in many forms (not all positive, such as a paroxysm of rage), we chose to highlight how infectious this type of joy can be.
• Misleading Terms You’ve Been Using Wrong (For Good Reason)
• Deciduous: Visual Word of the Day
• Pine and fir trees kept their green while their deciduous brothers were a riot of color. — Crickett Starr, Violet Among the Roses Learn more about this Word of the Day here.
• Fontastic: The History Behind the Top Fonts to Use on a Resume
• These fonts are great for telling your own story, so why not discover theirs?
• 10 Commonly Misused Words
• Did you really mean that? Some words have taken on incorrect meanings over time through consistent misuse. Make sure you're using the right word by flipping through this list of common misunderstandings.
• CelebrATE Your Summer!
• Tag, You’re It!
• Farther vs. Further
• Differentiating two words that go the distance… Do you use farther and further interchangeably? You’re not alone. The terms have very similar meanings, and English speakers have been using them as synonyms for centuries. But if you’re ready to get picky, there is one major difference that can guide your usage of these words! The widely accepted rule is to use farther when being literal and …
• Whose vs. Who’s
• We’ve all been there: agonizing over whether or not to add that apostrophe to who. Here’s an easy way to remember the difference. Whose is the possessive form of the pronoun who, while who’s is a contraction of the words who is or who has. Many people find whose and who’s particularly confusing because in English, an apostrophe followed by an S usually indicates the possessive form of a word. For example, a purse belonging to a woman is “the woman’s purse.” …
• Words Moving From There to Here
• Practice vs. Practise
• The difference between these two mainly comes down to British vs. American spelling. In British English, practise is a verb and practice is a noun. In American English, practice is both the noun and verb form. American English doesn’t really use practise. The Noun Practice As a noun, practice means “habit or custom” (as in “a religious practice“). It can also mean “repeated exercise to …
• How -Able Lets You Expand Your Descriptive Abilities
• -Able is a cool suffix that allows you to describe things in new and interesting ways. Adding -able to a word makes it into an adjective that indicates something or someone is capable of or worthy of something. For instance, if a doughnut is dunkable, that means it can be dipped into a cup of milk or coffee. Verbs With -Able You’ll most often see …
• Proved vs. Proven
• Have you proved your point, or proven it? Both words are both forms of the verb prove, which means “to establish truth through evidence or argument.” Both words are past participles, which basically means they completed actions that took place in the past. Generally speaking, proved and proven are interchangeable. You can usually choose between the two words based upon which one sounds better in the …
• Reeking vs. Wreaking
• Does Godzilla wreak havoc or reek havoc? Reeking is a word that usually describes something with a bad smell. Wreaking refers to something that causes destruction or damage. So really, it depends. Want to know more about these homophones? Keep reading. Reek As a verb, reek means a few things. Most often, it refers to a bad smell. You can either say “The pile of …
• Paramount vs. Tantamount
• Turns out, paramount doesn’t have that much to do with mountains. It does, however, describe something that’s of highest importance. Tantamount, on the other hand, refers to something that’s equal to something else. While the two words sound similar, that’s really all they have in common. Paramount Paramount is an adjective meaning “of utmost importance.” It can also describe someone with the highest level of …
• Palette, Pallet, or Palate
• Palette, pallet, and palate are homophones, which means they’re all pronounced the same way, but mean different things. Palette is mostly related to art. Pallet often refers to shipping equipment. Palate has several meanings related to taste. If you’re looking for a little more detail than that, read on. Palette When you picture a painter, you probably imagine them holding a flat board with a …
• Overwhelm vs. Underwhelm
• These two might seem like straightforward antonyms, but there are a few differences to keep in mind. Overwhelm is a verb that means “to overpower” or “to cover or bury.” Underwhelm means “to fail to impress.” Basically, these words have opposite meanings. Overwhelm Overwhelm is a versatile verb. A situation can overwhelm someone. That same person can be overwhelmed by a situation. They might describe …
• Opinion Of, Opinion On, or Opinion About?
• What do you believe the difference is? Opinion of values an opinion, opinion on emphasizes the topic of an opinion, and opinion about emphasizes the opinion itself. All three are fair ways to use the word opinion, but there are some major differences in how each phrase is typically used. Opinion Of Opinion of is the most common phrase among the three. Your opinion of …
• Older vs. Elder
• Both older and elder describe someone or something with the higher age in a comparison. Basically, they can both be the opposite of younger. They’re similar words that are usually interchangeable. For example, let’s say a woman has two sons, one 15 years old and one 18 years old. She could describe the 18-year-old boy as her older son or her elder son, and the …
• Oblivious To vs. Oblivious Of
• Oblivious to and oblivious of can both be used the same way. You can generally pick one based on which sounds better in the context of the sentence. Essentially, they both mean that someone is unaware of something. Synonyms Oblivious to and oblivious of share a meaning with a number of phrases, like ignorant of, unaware of, unconscious of, and blind to. Similarly, it may …
• Not Good vs. No Good
• Here’s something that’s good to know: No good means something has no use or value, and has no potential of becoming good. Not good means something is bad or undesirable. The correct way to use them isn’t that clear cut. At times, there’s no difference, and they can be used interchangeably. No Good When good is used as a noun, no can quantify or modify …
• Motherland vs. Fatherland
• The terms motherland and fatherland both refer to one’s native country, one’s country of origin, or the home of one’s ancestors. Whether a particular group uses motherland or fatherland tends to be a matter of custom. It’s unusual for a group to use both. Noah Webster’s The American Dictionary of the English Language, from 1847, referred to motherland as “the home of one’s mother’s ancestors” …
• Mistrust vs. Distrust
• Trust us on this one. There’s a difference between these two. Distrust is a complete lack of trust, and it’s often based on experience. Mistrust is a general lack of trust or confidence, sometimes based on instinct. Both words can be used as either verbs or nouns. As adjectives, they’re distrustful and mistrustful, respectively. Distrust tends to be used far more frequently than mistrust. Distrust …
• Every English “Rule” Has An Exception: I Before E, Except, Well, A Lot of Things
• A lot of times you’ll come across articles about English grammar that are like “You can do X, but not Y, and if you do Z your writing will be bad and you should feel bad.” OK, ouch. On the one hand, yes, English does have a lot of helpful rules in place that have developed over hundreds of years. And yes, rules help standardize …
• Moral vs. Ethical
• Maybe you’ve heard these terms and wondered what the difference is. A lot of people think of them as being the same thing. While they’re closely related concepts, moral refers mainly to guiding principles, and ethical refers to specific rules and actions. A moral precept is an idea or opinion that’s driven by a desire to be good. An ethical code is a set of …
• Math vs. Maths
• Both math and maths are short for the word mathematics. Math is the preferred term in the United States and Canada. Maths is the preferred term in England, Australia, and most other English-speaking places. Math The word math can refer to either the discipline or subject of mathematics. It can also refer to mathematical procedures. In a sentence like “She enjoys studying math and science,” …
• Marshal vs. Martial
• While the words are pronounced the same, they do have different meanings. Martial is an adjective that describes things related to war. A marshal is a police or military officer. Martial can only be used as an adjective, but marshal can be used as either a noun or a verb, but not an adjective. “But what about marshall?” you ask? We’ll get to that in …
• Manor vs. Manner
• A manor is a mansion or stately home. A manner is a characteristic way of doing something. These words are homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings), so it’s easy to mix them up. Manor In the context of a feudal system, manor referred to an estate or territorial unit consisting of a lord’s home and lands. In other words, the area …
• Make Peace With vs. Come to Terms With
• These two phrases mean almost the same thing, but it can be useful to know the difference. Making peace with something means you “become resolved or reconciled.” Coming to terms with something means you “accept or become resigned” to it. It can also mean to reach an agreement. Make peace with is usually used to talk about humans. Come to terms with is usually used …
• Ludicrous vs. Ridiculous
• Ludicrous means something is silly enough to cause amusement. Ridiculous means it’s absurd enough to invite mockery or derision. Ludicrous has a more playful and amusing sense than ridiculous. Ridiculous We use ridiculous when something is absurd enough to be laughable. Saying something is ridiculous often means you think it deserves mockery or disrespect. An 1857 guide called English Synonyms says that “Ridiculous includes an …
• Loose vs. Lose
• Did you lose that sock in the dryer, or loose it? Lose is a verb, while loose is almost always an adjective. They’re often confused because of their similar spelling. Lose Lose can only be used as a verb. It describes when you “come to be without something” (e.g. “to lose a sock in the laundry”) or “to suffer defeat or fail to win” (e.g. …
• Loath vs. Loathe
• It can be easy to mix up loath and loathe because of their extremely similar spellings, but here’s the difference: Loath is an adjective that means reluctant. Loathe is a transitive verb that means to be disgusted with. The fact that both words carry negative connotations also makes it easy to confuse them. It might help to know that their pronunciations are slightly different. Loath …
• Kudo vs. Kudos
• You’ve probably heard these words floating around various celebrations, but do you know the difference? Kudos is a noun that means “praise, honor, or acclaim.” Kudo is the singular version of kudos, but kudos is also singular. Kudos comes from the Greek word kydos, which means praise or renown. Kudos are usually offered in response to an exceptional achievement. A Brief History of Kudos The …
• Jury-rigged vs. Jerry-rigged
• This one’s for you, DIY fans. Jury-rigged means something was assembled quickly with the materials on hand. Jerry-built means it was cheaply built. Jerry-rigged is a combination of these two words. Jerry-rigged is a relatively new word. Many people consider it to be an incorrect version of jury-rigged, but it’s widely used in everyday speech. Jury-Rigged The word jury has a few different meanings. It …
• Juridical Process vs. Judicial Process
• Let’s bring some order to these two similar terms. The juridical process relates to the administration of the law. The judicial process is the series of steps a legal dispute goes through in the court system. It deals with procedural issues, and it determines the roles of the judge and the jury in a courtroom. The judicial process also deals with the role and jurisdiction …
• Itch vs. Scratch
• Okay, this one might make you feel a little itchy. An itch is a skin irritation that causes the desire to scratch. Scratch describes the action used to relieve an itch. The grammatically correct construction is “to scratch an itch.” People often use itch and scratch in place of each other in everyday speech. For example, you may hear people saying they need to “itch …
• “It is I” vs. “It’s Me”
• Hello, it is I. Those are the lyrics, right? Should they be? The phrase it is I is correct for formal writing. It’s me is considered an informal style. Today, most native English speakers use it’s me instead of it is I. Classic, Formal Usage Traditionally, the use of I is appropriate when it follows a linking verb like is, was, or were. Linking verbs …
• USA: Noun or Adjective?
• USA is an abbreviation for the United States of America. US tends to be the more popular way to abbreviate United States. Both of these abbreviations can serve as either adjectives or nouns. However, some style guides prefer United States as the noun form and US as the adjective form. USA USA is a noun because United States of America is a noun. A noun …
• What’s the Word for More Than One Software?
• The word software is a mass noun because it can be used to refer to a mass (or nonspecific number) of computing programs or products. Mass nouns function as both singular and plural nouns. They can describe either one item, multiple items of the same type, or an entire category of items. Some examples include bread, rice, hair, garbage, and ice. It isn’t necessary to add …
• Libel vs. Slander
• Libel and slander are both types of defamation. Defamation is the act of making negative statements that hurt another person’s reputation. Libel is written, published, or broadcast defamation, while slander refers to spoken defamatory statements. Both are illegal in the United States. Those who make defamatory statements may find themselves facing civil or criminal suits in state courts. In the United States, defamation suits are …
• Irreparable vs. Unrepairable
• The words irreparable and unrepairable are synonyms that mean unable to be fixed. Both irreparable and unrepairable are adjectives (words that modify nouns by describing an aspect of them). Irreparable was first used between the late 1300s to early 1400s. It’s a Middle English word derived from the Latin term, irreparabilis, meaning not able to be recovered. Unrepairable is a related form of the verb …
• Intrusive vs. Obtrusive
• Intrusive and obtrusive both refer to invading a situation. Obtrusive is the more intentional one of these. The meanings and sounds of both words are close enough that it can be easy to confuse them. Some thesauruses present the words as synonyms, but there are a few subtle distinctions between them. Similarities These two words have very similar meanings. They both involve inserting oneself into …
• Insidious vs. Invidious
• Insidious and invidious both describe the way someone does something bad. Insidious implies secrecy, while invidious is more open. An insidious action is sneaky and harmful. An invidious action is also negative, but it happens out in the open. Insidious Insidious actions are covert. Those who carry them out hope to accomplish some act of evil. For example, lies are insidious. Secret meetings and intrigue …
• Inquire vs. Enquire
• And just what, may we ask, is the difference between these? While inquire means “to seek information in a formal way,” enquire means “to ask in a general way.” They can be used interchangeably. Inquire and enquire both originate from the same Latin word, meaning to seek. Both words mean to request information or examine facts. Inquire or enquire can be used as either a …
• Inhibit vs. Prohibit
• Inhibit and prohibit are both verbs that mean to prevent or to forbid. Both verbs require a direct object to make sense, and they always involve two parties. Though both words have similar definitions, inhibit and prohibit aren’t interchangeable. In general, someone is inhibited by internal feelings or prohibited by an external source. Inhibit Inhibit is a verb with several meanings, including “to restrain, hinder, …
• Ingenious vs. Ingenuous
• Are you ready, Grammar Genius? Both ingenious and ingenuous are adjectives. Ingenious indicates cleverness or intelligence, while ingenuous refers to sincerity or a naive nature. How To Use Ingenious When you say ingenious out loud, it sounds like a combination of the words in and genius. Since a genius is an intelligent person, you can use that part of the word to associate ingenious with …
• In Case Of vs. In the Event Of
• Do you break the glass in case of emergency or in the event of emergency? The phrases in case of and in the event of are both prepositions. The first one means if it should occur. The second means if or when something happens. A preposition is a word or phrase that shows a relationship between two elements in a clause. Some common prepositions are …
• Imply vs. Infer
• Imply and infer both refer to unspoken communication. The sender of a message is the one who implies, while the receiver is the one who infers. This applies to both spoken and written communication. To imply is to subtly hint at a hidden message that isn’t part of the actual words spoken or written. For example, you can imply that you like someone by sending …
• Imminent, Immanent, or Eminent
• When something is imminent, that means it’s impending. Immanent isn’t a typo, it means inherent. Eminent means distinguished. Imminent Imminent means likely to occur at any moment or impending. It refers to something that’s approaching, about to happen, anticipated, or threatening to occur. For example, in Coquette, author Frank Swinnerton uses the word to describe someone’s arrival: “While she was waiting, she one day received …
• Immigrants, Emigrants, or Migrants
• There’s been a lot of talk in the news about these three groups. Sometimes you’ll see the terms being used interchangeably, but there are some differences you should be aware of. It’s important to understand what these words mean so you can use them correctly. Immigrants are people who come into a new country to settle permanently. Emigrants leave one country to settle in a new …
• Hot Dog! Are They Sandwiches, Or Not?
• Sandwich. This is a word worth pondering on several levels. First, what’s its origination? Why is a piece of meat between two slices of bread called a sandwich? Second, many of us mispronounce it, referring to a sammich. And we’re saving the biggest controversy for last. Is a hot dog…a sandwich? We feel obligated to get to the heart of this matter. It’s why we’re …
• 3 Easy Tips for Writing Realistic Dialects
• Dialects are unique ways that people speak within a language. They may be distinguished by special grammar, words, sentence structure, and pronunciation. Dialects may emerge in languages due to differences among regions, classes, or ethnic backgrounds. Many writers use dialects to enhance realism in their stories, especially for characters in specific locations. However, it’s easy to overuse or misuse dialects if you aren’t careful. To …
• Unlock the Full Potential of Punctuation Marks
• Punctuation marks have a lot of different uses. The period, question mark, and exclamation point are used to end sentences. The comma, semicolon, colon, and dash indicate a pause or break. Parentheses contain words, while hyphens combine them. Apostrophes show the omission of letters, and also show possession. Ending a Sentence A period (.) ends any sentence that forms a statement. Periods are also used …
• Loan, Lend, Loaned, and Lent
• The words loan and loaned are the present and past tenses of to loan. Lend and lent are the present and past tenses of to lend. As verbs, loan and lend are often used interchangeably. For example, “A bank loans people money to buy a home. It also lends borrowers money to buy a car.” Loan and lend also have identical meanings when they’re used …
• Let’s Pause and Talk About Commas
• You’ve probably heard a lot of things about the comma. A comma (,) signifies a short pause in a sentence. It can also divide clauses or items in a list. It can be used to create division, or to improve the clarity of a sentence. Pauses, Adjectives, and Nonessential Phrases In writing, commas usually signal a pause that would be heard if the sentence were …
• Footnotes vs. Endnotes
• Let’s say you have a bit of extra information that’s too long for parentheses. What do you do? That’s where footnotes and endnotes come in. What are they exactly? Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page they refer to, while endnotes appear at the very end of a text. They usually show up in academic writing. Read on if you want to know more …
• Enemy vs. Nemesis
• Who do you think would win an epic showdown like this one? We often see these words used interchangeably, but there are some subtle differences between them. An enemy is a foe who’s hostile toward the protagonist (or central character) of a story. A nemesis is an opponent or rival whom a protagonist can’t overcome. The Enemy In literature, an enemy is often referred to …
• Assent vs. Ascent
• Homophones: Love them or hate them, they’re everywhere. These two are a great example. They may sound the same, but their meanings couldn’t be any more different. Assent is a word that indicates agreement or approval. Ascent refers to an upward movement. Assent As a verb, assent means to agree or to give in. When used as a verb, it’s often followed by the word …
• What Are You Doing, Action Verb?
• Action verbs are typically single words that describe what a person or thing in a sentence does (like run, write, yell, and think). So if it answers the question What is the subject doing? it’s the action verb. In the sentence “John paints the garage,” the subject is John. To find the action verb, ask yourself What is John doing? John paints, so the action …
• Quiz Yourself: When to capitalize “President”
• Meet the president: Mr. President Have you ever worried about when president should be capitalized? You should only capitalize it as a title before an individual’s name or when directly addressing a person in that role. You’ve probably seen plenty of variations in the news and on social media. But do you know when you’re actually supposed to capitalize titles like president or governor? Take …
• Quiz Yourself: How Many Emoji Can You Name?
• Who are you, emoji? Emoji are everywhere. They’re all over your social media feeds, your mom likes to text them to you, and they’re even making their way into ads. You know and love them, and so do we. But did you know that these fun, familiar characters have official names? Each emoji has a specific name that’s determined by the Unicode Consortium. Some names …
• This or That: Do You Know the Difference Between Adjectives and Pronouns?
• Sometimes these two just look so similar. It can be easy to mix them up. The simplest explanation is that adjectives modify nouns or pronouns, and pronouns refer back to nouns that were mentioned earlier in a sentence or paragraph. Keep reading if you need more details. Using Adjectives Adjectives are useful for creating vivid descriptions because they can add specific traits to a person …
• And Now…Transition Words!
• Good transitions connect one sentence or paragraph to the next. A word, phrase, or sentence can serve as a transition to help make a shift in relationship, space, or time. Transitions connect ideas and supporting examples. They signal the coming of additional information or a conclusion. Transitions in Relationship Some transition words and phrases are used to compare and contrast. These include comparable to, in …
• Emphasis on Italics
• Italics are typically used to show emphasis or to denote titles of stand-alone works. Different style guides have different rules about what to italicize. Here are some good general guidelines, but the most important thing is to stay consistent within your work. Titles of Works In most cases, you should italicize the titles of complete works, like books or movies. Some style guides, like APA …
• Pesky Homophones: Too, To And Two
• The three words too, to and two sound exactly alike but have three distinct usages! They are classic examples of what we refer to as homophones—words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings and spellings. They often end up in the wrong spot in written language as a result of an over-eager spellcheck program on your phone. Let’s examine which one fits in the …
• Say What? Direct Questions vs. Reported Dialogue
• A direct question is when you ask a question by speaking directly (e.g. “How are you doing today?”). Reported dialogue is when you report what someone else says (e.g. “Joan asked how you’re doing today.”). Reported dialogue usually uses the third person point of view. Direct Questions Direct questions usually include interrogative pronouns or adverbs. Interrogative pronouns and adverbs include words like as who, what, …
• When to Use Definite vs. Indefinite Articles
• Articles are a unique type of adjectives that indicate which noun (person, place, or thing) you’re talking about. The only definite article in English is the, and it refers to a specific noun. Indefinite articles (a or an) refer to nouns more generally. Indefinite Articles Indefinite articles refer to non-specific nouns. Think “I need a pen” or “I want an orange.” In both cases, we …
• Using a Comma with “As Well As,” and Other Phrases
• Okay, yeah, this sounds like a very specific topic, but it’s useful to know the answer. Basically, you should use commas with as well as when it’s part of a nonrestrictive modifying clause. There should be commas before and after any nonrestrictive modifying clause. That’s the broad answer, but read on if you want to get to know details. Nonrestrictive Clauses A nonrestrictive modifying clause …
• Getting to Know Predicate Nominative and Predicate Adjective
• In general, a predicate completes a sentence by providing information about what the subject is or does. The subject of a sentence is who or what is doing the action. The predicate explains the action. There’s often a linking verb (like is or became) in between the two. A predicate nominative is a noun that completes the linking verb in a sentence. Predicate adjectives complete …
• Coordinating Between Independent and Dependent Clauses
• You might have seen these terms floating around. Clauses are the building blocks of sentences. They’re groups of related words (phrases) that contain both a subject and a verb. When a clause can stand alone as a complete sentence with a clear meaning, it’s considered independent. If it only makes sense when you join it with another clause, it’s dependent (or subordinate). For example, “in …
• Quiz Yourself: Affect vs. Effect
• Get to know your cause and…consequences. We get a lot of lookups every day for these homophones. To make a long story short, one is a (usually) a verb, and the other is (usually) a noun. Do you remember which is which? Test your skills! Need a refresher? Read the article on affect vs. effect here.
• 3 Action-Packed Types of Verbs
• Verbs do a lot of things. There are 3 types of verbs: verbs of being, linking verbs, and action verbs. Most verbs are either action or linking verbs, depending how they’re used in a sentence. Verbs of Being Verbs of being demonstrate a state of existence. Yes, your yoga teacher was right: you can just be. The major verbs of being are to be and …
• Its vs. It’s
• One confusing pair of words to write out is its and it’s. Its is a possessive form of it, meaning belonging to it. It’s is a contraction of the words it is or it has. To figure out which is correct for your sentence, just swap in “it is” and then “it has“. If the sentence makes sense with either of those substitutions, use it’s. If the resulting …
• How Long Should My Paragraph Be?
• There isn’t really a required number of sentences to make a paragraph, but there are some guidelines you might want to consider. A typical paragraph consists of 3 to 6 sentences. Paragraphs are meant to express a central idea. They can be made of any number of sentences as long as they meet the structural requirements. The basic structure of a paragraph has three parts: …
• 5 Types of Nouns that You Use All the Time
• Nouns come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. The major ones are common nouns, proper nouns, abstract nouns, possessive nouns, and collective nouns. A noun is a person, place, or thing. The category of thingsmay sound super vague, but in this case it means inanimate objects, abstract concepts, and activities. Phrases and other parts of speech can also behave like nouns, and be …
• I vs. Me
• Is it “my friends and I,” or “my friends and me?” I is a subject pronoun, and me is an object pronoun. This means I can be used as the subject of a sentence, and me can only be used as the object of one. I can perform an action, while me can only have actions performed upon it. Subject vs. Object Pronouns A subject …
• Gettin’ Short and Sweet with Apostrophes
• An apostrophe (’) can show possession or indicate that letters or numbers have been omitted. They can also indicate ownership. Possessive Nouns When a singular noun doesn’t end in S, you just need to add an apostrophe and an S to make it possessive. Examples include “the boy’s bike,” “the dog’s leash,” and “Bob’s house.” If a singular noun does end in S, you should …
• Stand Apart from the Crowd (with Parentheses)
• Parentheses offset text that isn’t important to the meaning of a sentence. Things like extra information, clarifications, asides, or citations. The information inside the parentheses can be as short as a number or a word, or it can be as long as a few sentences. Parentheses always appear in pairs. They’re often used where commas would also be appropriate. Clarifying and Adding Extra A sentence …
• Active vs. Passive Voice: Hear and Be Heard
• First, a quick overview, in case all you need is a reminder: In active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb. In passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb. If you feel like you need a little more than that, keep reading. Passive Voice The subject of a sentence is the person or thing that sentence is about. You can …
• Irregular Plural Nouns: People Change, but Aircraft Don’t
• Irregular plural nouns are nouns that become plural in a way other than adding -s or -es to the end. It can be tough to remember which nouns are irregular, but here are a few guidelines for how to handle the ones that are. Regular Nouns First off, a noun is a person, place, or thing. Nouns are singular when they represent one item and …
• Custom-Made Descriptions with Hyphens
• The shortest of the dashes, hyphens (-) link words and parts of words. They can connect prefixes or break up a word at the end of a line of text. They can also combine two or more words that describe a noun. For example, in George Orwell’s 1984, hyphenated words help create unusual descriptive phrases: “He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because …
• En Dashes from A-Z
• You don’t hear as much about them as other dashes, but you’ve most likely seen them around. En dashes (-) can denote a range or connect the endpoints of a route. They can also show a contrast or connection between two words. You can use them to replace the words to, and, or versus. An en dash is longer than a hyphen (-) and shorter …
• The Joining and Separating Power of the Em Dash
• Few punctuation marks are as divisive as the em dash. Used in place of commas, parentheses, or colons, the em dash (—) sets off a word or clause with added emphasis. It’s the longest of the dashes, and it signals a disruption in the sentence’s flow. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses one in The Great Gatsby to show an interruption in train of thought: …
• Don’t Leave Us Dangling, Modifier!
• When you see a phrase in a sentence, and you can’t be sure which word it’s referring to, chances are it’s a dangling modifier. Having nothing to modify, the phrase just “dangles” without purpose (hence its name). Modifiers usually apply to the nearest noun to them. When writers leave out the noun or noun phrase they intend to modify, the modifier may appear to refer …
• Wish You Were Here, Subjunctive Mood!
• The subjunctive mood is a way of talking about unreal or conditional situations. You can also use it to describe desires, wishes, needs, or intentions. You’ll often see it as the format for idioms and expressions. Unreal Situations The most common use of the subjunctive mood to express imaginary or hypothetical situations. It’s often used in if clauses. To show the subjunctive mood, you should …
• Super 6: The Major Punctuation Marks
• You’ve definitely seen them around, but do you know how they’re supposed to be used? The major punctuation marks are the period, comma, exclamation point, question mark, semicolon, and colon. These marks organize sentences and give them structure. The Period A period (.) ends a sentence. It comes immediately after the last letter of a sentence, and there only needs to be one space between …
• It’s Time to Talk About Infinitives
• An infinitive is the most basic form of a verb. You’ll usually see it with the word to, as in to eat or to think. An infinitive phrase is an infinitive plus complements and modifiers. To eat vegetables daily and to think about a solution are infinitive phrases. While infinitives themselves are verbs, infinitive phrases can be used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. Adverbial Infinitives …
• What’s In A Name: Tech Talk
• In the modern world we occupy, tech company names like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others are a part of our daily life and conversations. Some of them, like Google, become synonymous with the act itself. If you need to search something, you “just Google it,” which is much like what happened to Xerox when copiers came into vogue. Have you ever stopped to consider where …
• Creating Rhythm and Balance with Parallelisms
• When writers use very similar wording across several sentences or lines of poetry, it’s known as parallel sentence structure. Doing this creates rhythm and balance. Parallel sentence structures are also known as parallelisms. Simple parallelisms may be as short as words or phrases. More complex ones may combine entire clauses or sentences. Parallel sentence structures can highlight aspects of stories and poems in many ways. …
• Try Tongue Twisters Today!
• Try saying this out loud: “Does this shop stock short socks with spots?” Not so easy? That’s because it’s a tongue twister. Tongue twisters are fun verbal exercises full of words that rhyme or sound similar. People will usually try to say them quickly, several times in a row without making any mistakes. Why They Work There are plenty of well-known tongue twisters. One of …
• All About Prepositional Phrases
• Prepositional phrases are the kinds of things you use all the time without thinking about them. They’re groups of words that begin with a preposition and end with an object. Prepositions are words like about, across, after, for, and in. You’ll see them in simple prepositional phrases, like about zebras, after school, and with friends. Objects of Prepositions When we say object, we mean the …
• 4 Ways to Structure Your Sentences
• The four types of sentence structures are simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. The quantity and arrangement of clauses determines the makeup of each type of sentence structure. A clause is a grouping of words with both a subject and a verb that can (but doesn’t always) form a sentence. If the clause can form a complete thought on its own, it’s considered an independent clause. …
• Alumni vs. Alumnus
• Do you know if you’re an alumnus or an alumni? Alumni actually is the plural form of alumnus, a Latin word that means a graduate or former student of an educational institution. Although alumnus usually refers to academics, it can also mean a former employee, associate, or member of any organized group. Alumni refers to more than one alumnus (think of a graduating class). The …
• 5 Relative Pronouns That You Use Every Day
• Spoilers: We’ll be diving into who vs. whom in this one! The first thing we should mention is that relative pronouns introduce relative clauses. A relative clause is a type of dependent clause (a clause that can’t stand by itself as a complete sentence). It adds extra information to a sentence. The five relative pronouns are who, whom, whose, which, and that. Who vs. Whom …
• Comparative Adjectives Just Keep Getting Better
• Let’s say you want to describe a noun (a person, place, or thing). You can use an adjective, as in “Jane’s hair is long,” but what if you want to describe the way Jane’s hair compares with Natalie’s? That’s where comparative adjectives come in. Comparative adjectives highlight the differences between two nouns. They let you say things like “Jane’s hair is longer than Natalie’s hair.” …
• 5 Types of Lexical Verbs Bursting Onto the Scene
• Lexical verbs are the main verbs (or action words) in a sentence. They can show the subject’s action or express a state of being. They fall into several categories: transitive, intransitive, linking, dynamic, and static. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs A transitive verb expresses action, and needs a direct object to receive that action. “Alice sees the candle,” is an example. Sees is the lexical verb …
• Can You Name the 3 Types of Adjectives?
• For starters, Adjectives are words that describe nouns or pronouns. They answer questions like what kind, how many, and which one? The three main types of adjectives are descriptive adjectives, quantitative adjectives, and demonstrative adjectives. Descriptive Adjectives Descriptive adjectives describe the characteristics of a noun. They can tell you about a noun’s size, color, shape, taste, and more. Some examples are small, red, round, friendly, …
• Is “Supposably” a Real Word?
• What does it mean? Supposably means capable of being supposed. In other words, it describes something that’s capable of happening. Though supposably is a valid word, it can be tricky to use in a sentence, and isn’t often used in modern speech. Contemporary writers are more likely to use its synonym, conceivably. Supposably is frequently confused with the similar-sounding word supposedly. The main difference is …
• My Apology vs. My Apologies
• If you need to say you’re sorry, it helps to know whether you’re sending your apology or apologies.The phrase my apologies is an idiom, while the phrase my apology literally means my act of apologizing. As an idiom, my apologies means excuses or regrets. This phrase is a way of saying you’re sorry. The phrase my apology is not an idiom. It only has a …
• Anyway, Anyways, and Any Way
• Which word is it, anyway? Anyway is a common adverb used to mean in any case, while any way is an adjective-noun pair that means whichever path. Anyways is the very informal form of anyway. It never appears in formal writing, and its only real use is to simulate the spoken word in lines of dialogue. Anyway Anyway, used as an adverb, suggests a disregard …
• Sometime, Sometimes, and Some Time
• While they appear very similar, sometime, sometimes, and some time have slightly different meanings. Sometime means a vague point in time, and usually refers to a long amount of time. Sometimes means occasionally. Some time refers to a period of time. Sometime Sometime refers to an unspecified point in time. It functions as an adverb, and is also synonymous with someday, one day, or sooner …
• OMG, Texting Acronyms FTW
• Stupider vs. More Stupid
• It turns out stupider is an actual word. Stupider and more stupid are both comparative forms of the adjective stupid. They can be used interchangeably. In the English language, stupid is one of just a few adjectives that have two grammatically correct options for their comparative form. The superlative forms of stupid are stupidest and most stupid. Stupid The word stupid is an adjective (a …
• Amidst vs. Amid
• Amid and amidst sound so similar it can be easy to confuse them. They’re prepositions that both mean in the middle of or surrounded by. A preposition is a word that describes the relationship between two things in a sentence. The two words are interchangeable. Usage Grammatically, there’s no difference between the words amid and amidst. The primary distinction lies in when and where people …
• Assume vs. Presume
• The words assume and presume both mean that you take something for granted as being true, but the difference is based on how certain you are. Assume is typically used in situations where someone takes something as the truth with a very low level of certainty or with no proof at all. Presume usually involves a higher level of certainty and is used in situations …
• Nauseated vs. Nauseous
• The word nauseated means to be affected with nausea or to feel sick to your stomach. Nauseous describes something that causes a feeling of nausea. These words have the same root word, nausea, a Latin word that refers specifically to seasickness. Nauseous and nauseated originally had different definitions. In current common usage, though, the words have evolved to become practically interchangeable. Nauseous The word nauseous …
• Hyperbole vs. Hype
• Are you excited? We are. Hyperbole is a literary device that relies on exaggeration, while hype is a word associated with excitement and publicity. Hyperbole Hyperbole is extreme exaggeration. It’s not meant to be taken literally. Writers use hyperbole to create imagery, emphasize feelings, or provide insight about a character. Hyperbole appears in novels, songs, poems, and daily speech. The song “1,000 Miles” by Vanessa …
• Hyper vs. Hypo
• Let’s start from the top: Hyper- is a prefix that means excess or exaggeration, while hypo- is another prefix that means under or beneath. Both hyper and hypo are usually used as prefixes, which are elements or partial words added to the beginning of a base word to modify its meaning. Hyper is derived from the Greek word for over, and hypo is a Greek …
• Former vs. Latter
• First thing’s first: Former and latter are both terms that denote an item’s place in a two-part sequence. They usually appear in the sentence immediately following the sequence. Former refers back to the first of a set, while latter refers to the last item. An easy way to remember the difference is to recall that both former and first begin with an F, while both …
• Learn to Expertly Talk About Split Infinitives
• Sometimes infinitives need a little space. A split infinitive occurs when there’s an adverb between two parts of an infinitive. An infinitive consists of the word to and the simple form of a verb (e.g. to go and to read). “To suddenly go” and “to quickly read” are examples of split infinitives because the adverbs (suddenly and quickly) split (or break up) the infinitives to …
• Whomever vs. Whoever
• Raise your hand if you’ve had the who vs. whom argument. Isn’t it time to put that struggle to rest? Whoever is a pronoun that describes someone who performs an action, while whomever is a pronoun that describes someone who receives an action. Both whoever and whomever are interrogative pronouns that deal with people. Whoever Whoever is a subjective pronoun: It describes an unknown person …
• Should I use ALL-CAPS?
• Here’s When to Capitalize Words
• There are a few specific cases where words should be capitalized. They’re easy to remember. In English, capital letters are most commonly used at the start of a sentence, for the pronoun I, and for proper nouns. The First Word of a Sentence You should always capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence, no matter what the word is. Take, for …
• Stop and Think About Run-On Sentences
• A run-on sentence is a sentence where two or more independent clauses have been incorrectly joined together. An independent clause contains both a subject and a verb and can stand on its own as a complete sentence. Some examples of independent clauses include “Jane ate dinner,” “John went to the store,” and “Sue made a pie.” Comma Splices A comma splice is a grammatical error …
• Inter- vs Intra-
• What’s the difference between the interstate highway and the intrastate highway? Inter- is a prefix that means between two groups, and intra- is a prefix which means within or inside one group. Inter- and intra- are both prefixes, which are groups of letters that are placed at the beginning of a word in order to change its meaning. Inter- Inter- is a common prefix that …
• Be a Grammar Expert: Master the Semicolon
• It’s one of the hottest things grammar nerds argue about: Just when are you supposed to use semicolons? Semicolons can join two or more independent sentences or divide items that are separated by commas in a list. A semicolon indicates a slight break in the flow of thought. Joining Independent Sentences A semicolon links two or more independent clauses that are closely related. An independent …
• Introducing: Colons!
• Colons are used to introduce lists, quotes, or further explanation. They’re also used to separate items in non-grammatical structures. Introducing a List A colon can be used to introduce a list. In general, the portion of sentence before the colon should be a complete sentence (it should contain a subject and a verb). Phrases like the following may sometimes be used to signal an introduction …
• Take Our NFL Final Four Quiz!
• Only in the NFL are Patriots, Steelers, Packers and Falcons related… The “Final Four” isn’t really the accepted term for the AFC and NFC title games. It’s actually used most commonly in connection with the NCAA basketball championships (also see: March Madness). But it’s catchier than “AFC/NFC Conference Title Games,” so here we are. The New England Patriots host the Pittsburgh Steelers for the AFC title, …
• Sentence Fragments: Yes or No?
• A sentence fragment is a group of words that doesn’t contain all of the required parts of a sentence. In other words, a sentence fragment is an incomplete sentence. It generally lacks a main subject, a verb, or both. A subject is the noun (person, place, or thing) that performs the main action of the sentence. This main action is the verb. Conversely, a complete …
• Quiz Yourself: At Last, Suffixes!
• Let’s get to the bottom of this. A suffix is a group of letters added to the end of a word. Suffixes do so many things. They’re great when you want to chat briefly about going on a trip. Or when you’re shopping for a waterproof phone case to bring with you. Do you have your suffixes down? Take the quiz! Need a refresher? Just …
• Everyday vs. Every Day
• Do you eat breakfast every day or everyday? The word everyday describes things that are commonplace or ordinary, and the phrase every day indicates that something happens each day. Everyday answers the question what kind? For example, in the sentence “Wear your everyday clothes,” the word everyday tells you what kind of clothing to wear. Every day answers the question when? In the sentence “He …
• Among vs. Amongst
• When you’re among friends, you talk amongst yourselves, right? Or is it the other way around? Among and amongst are variations of the same word. Among is more common in American English, while amongst used almost exclusively in British English. History and Meaning Amongst may feel more archaic to speakers of American English, but among is actually the older word, dating back to Old English …
• Lions and Tigers and Bears, Et Al.
• Et al. is used to shorten the list of names when a writer refers to a book, article or other published work that has three or more authors. Et al. means “and others.” It’s an abbreviation of the Latin et alii. It’s mainly used by academic writers when they cite other authors’ work in a paper or article. In popular media, et al. may be …
• Quiz Yourself: It’s Raining Cats and Dogs…and Idioms!
• Idioms: You can say that again We’re head over heels for idioms, and hope you are, too. Can you go the whole nine yards, or do you need to go back to the drawing board? Test your idiom skills now! Can’t get enough idioms? Need to go back to square one? Check out the article here. Want to go the extra mile? Here’s another idiom quiz …
• You’ve Just Got to Know All About Imperatives
• An imperative sentence gives a command, demand, or instructions directly to an audience, and typically begins with an action word (or verb). These sentences often appear to lack a subject, or the person, place, or thing that performs the main action. This is because the subject of this type of sentence tends to be the audience that’s being directly addressed or commanded to do something. …
• WikiLeaks Uncovers CIA’s Secret Hacking Code Names
• Do You Know When to Capitalize the Seasons?
• As a general rule, when you’re using the name of a season in a sentence as a noun or an adjective, it shouldn’t be capitalized. There are only a few times when seasons should be capitalized, including when they’re used as proper nouns, when they start a sentence, when they’re used in titles, or when they’re personified. Seasons as Nouns or Adjectives When a season …
• Do Double Entendres Mean What You Think They Do?
• A double entendre is a subtle literary device that uses one statement to convey two very different meanings. Taken literally, a double entendre is usually an innocent statement that has no ironic or inappropriate overtones. Taken another way, the same statement often can mean something too indelicate to be said in polite company. A double entendre can also work in reverse, with an apparently dirty …
• Let’s Cut to the Chase: Idioms Are a Piece of Cake
• Idioms are expressions whose meanings are figurative and different from the literal meanings of the words within them. For example, the idiom “It costs an arm and a leg” means that something is very expensive. The literal meaning (that something has to be paid for with body parts) isn’t typically considered. English language learners may have a difficult time understanding idioms, since their figurative meaning …
• Running, Jumping, and Playing with Gerunds
• A gerund is a verb form that ends in -ing and functions as a noun or object in a sentence or phrase. Though a gerund may look like a verb, it doesn’t behave like one in a sentence. A gerund can act as the subject of a sentence, as the object of a preposition, or as the object of a verb. When a gerund has …
• Quoting Accurately with Sic
• Sic indicates that the word or phrase it follows has been written or spelled in the same way it originally was, even though it appears to be a mistake. Writers often use sic (which comes into English from the Latin word for so or thus) when they’re quoting material from another source. The use of sic lets the writer off the hook for any spelling …
• Quiz Yourself: Prefixes From the Top
• “First thing’s first.” A prefix is a group of letters added to the beginning of a word to modify its meaning. You’ll probably recognize them from the last time you’ve needed to rewrite an email or undo a typo (thanks, Autocorrect). Prefixes are all around us, but how well do you know them? Take the quiz! Need to start over? Just want to learn more? …
• Prefixes and Suffixes from Start to Finish
• Prefixes and suffixes are super useful for customizing the meanings of words, but what are they? A prefix is a group of letters (or an affix) that’s added to the beginning of a word, and a suffix is an affix that’s added to the end of a word. Prefixes modify the meaning of a word. They can make a word negative, show repetition, or indicate …
• Having It All Figured Out
• Have and has are different forms of the verb to have. Even though they come from the same word, there are slight differences in the way they’re used. Have is used with I, you, we, and they, while has is used with he, she, and it. The verb to have has many different meanings. Its primary meaning is to possess, own, hold for use, or …
• Getting Your Subjects to Agree with Verbs
• No one wants a grammar argument, so if your subjects and verbs are fighting, you have a problem on your hands. Subject-verb agreement refers to having the subject and the verb in a sentence match, both being either singular or plural. The subject of a sentence is a noun (a person, place, or thing) that tells what the sentence is about, and the verb is …
• Quiz Yourself: Do You Use “A,” “An,” and “The” Correctly?
• “Hand me an avocado and a radish for the salad, please.” Articles are words that make it clear whether a noun refers to something specific or something general. The English language has three articles: a, an, and the. You use them everyday whether you’re talking about the lunch you just ate, a foodie trend you’re dying to try, or really, anything else. But do you …
• Present, Past, and Sometimes Perfect Participles
• Participles are words derived from verbs that can function as adjectives or as parts of verb phrases to create verb tenses. The two main types of participles are the present participle and the past participle. The perfect participle depends on the past participle for its forms. Participial phrases function as adjectives that modify the subjects or other nouns in sentences. The Present Participle Adding -ing …
• Cue vs. Queue
• When do you cue, and when do you queue? Cue typically refers to a signal that encourages someone to take an action, while queue indicates an ordered line or file. Both cue and queue are pronounced like the letter Q, and are considered to be homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Additionally, both cue and queue can be used …
• Verb Tenses Past, Future, and Even Perfect
• The six basic verb tenses are past, present, future, past perfect, present perfect, and future perfect. Verb tenses identify the time period when an action occurs. They also show relationships between events that happen at different times. The simple tenses (past, present, and future) are the most basic forms. Simple Tenses Present tense describes events happening now. It’s also useful for describing a direct action …
• Meet the president, Mr. President
• Have you ever worried about when president should be capitalized? You should only capitalize president as a title before an individual’s name or when directly addressing a person in that role (e.g. “President George Washington”). Variations of the word, such as presidential, should not be capitalized unless they begin a sentence or are used as part of a proper name (e.g. “Presidential Medal of Freedom”). …
• Irregular Verbs Are Irregularly Difficult
• Verbs (the action words in sentences) are grouped as either regular and irregular, based on whether they follow standard rules of conjugation. Some common irregular verbs include go, have, make, say, take, and know. Regular Verbs To form the past tense of a regular verb, just add -d or -ed to the end of it. For example, learn becomes learned in the past tense. Irregular …
• The FANBOY Conjunctions
• What are coordinating conjunctions, and how are they used? Coordinating conjunctions join words, phrases, or clauses that have the same grammatical function. You can remember the seven coordinating conjunctions by using the mnemonic device FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. The coordinating conjunctions and, or, and but are most commonly used. They’re often essential for forming complete sentences because they balance related …
• Quiz Yourself: Personification vs. Anthropomorphism
• You see these things all the time on TV and in books. Personification is when you describe non-human things as if they’re humans, and anthropomorphism is when something walks and talks like a human. They’re so similar that a lot of people mix them up. Can you tell them apart? Take the quiz to find out!
• When X Always = 10
• Roman numerals are a collection of symbols that make up the number system that was used by the ancient Romans. Today, Roman numerals are more commonly used in titles, to number parts of works, in music theory, and on clock faces. Where do you see Roman numerals most often? The Symbols The Roman numeral system uses only seven symbols: I, V, X, L, C, D, …
• Pore Over or Pour Over
• We asked some Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students to give us their take on the difference between the words pore and pour. This short is the result of film student Marion Beachum’s creativity. Want a more detailed explanation? Check out this article on pour over vs. pore over. Check out some of our other videos
• Please, Adverb, Tell Us When
• The most common types of adverbs are those of frequency, manner, place, purpose, and time. They describe when, how, where, and why an action occurs. Adverbs are sometimes used to intensify an action, or they may describe the circumstances in which an action takes place. Adverbs usually modify verbs. They can also describe adjectives and other adverbs. Adverbs tend to end with the suffix -ly, …
• Will You Use All 8 Types of Pronouns Today?
• The eight types of pronouns are personal, possessive, reflexive, reciprocal, relative, demonstrative, interrogative, and indefinite. Certain types of pronouns closely relate to one another, and many words can function as multiple different types of pronouns, depending how they’re used. Personal Pronouns Personal pronouns take the place of people or things. They can be either singular or plural, depending whether they refer to one or multiple …
• How, Where, Why - Adverbial Phrases Will Tell You
• An adverbial phrase is a group of words that refines the meaning of a verb, adjective, or adverb. Similar to adverbs, adverbial phrases modify other words by explaining why, how, where, or when an action occurred. They may also describe the conditions of an action or object, or the degree to which an action or object was affected. Consider the following sentence: “He drove the …
• The Clarifying Powers of A, An, and The
• Articles are words that make it clear whether a noun refers to something specific or something general. The English language has only three articles: a, an, and the. This stanza from Emily Dickinson’s poem “A Bird Came Down the Walk” demonstrates the use of all three: A Bird came down the Walk— He did not know I saw— He bit an Angleworm in halves And …
• Telling Us How and When: Adverbs at Work
• What does an adverb do? An adverb is a word that modifies or describes verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Adverbs typically answer questions like how or when in relation to the action of a sentence. Many, but not all, common adverbs end in -ly, like quickly, usually, and completely. Modifying Verbs As their name implies, adverbs describe or modify verbs. A verb is the action …
• ACTION! Verbs in the Spotlight
• A verb conveys the action or state of being within a sentence. It answers the question what happens? In the sentence “John drives to the store,” for example, the answer to “What happens to John?” is that John drives. The base form of a verb starts with the word to and ends with the infinitive, or root, verb. Examples include to walk, to go, to …
• A World Without Adjectives Would Be ______
• What does an adjective do? Adjectives describe or modify nouns and pronouns by providing specific details about their kind, color, quality or quantity. They generally answer questions like what kind, how many, whose, and which one? You can help readers imagine situations, characters and settings by using adjectives to provide information about what is seen, tasted, felt, and heard. Adjectives can be placed either before …
• Quiz Yourself: How Well Do You Know Roman Numerals?
• Did you use Roman numerals today? You may not think of them often, but if you’ve ever read a clock or talked about the Super Bowl, you’ve probably needed to remember V = 5. Check to see how well you know them in our quiz!
• Making Connections With Conjunctions
• A conjunction is a connecting word used to join words, phrases, sentences, and clauses. Conjunctions are often single words (like and, but, and because). In some cases, they can also be phrases (e.g. in any case). The two main types of conjunctions are subordinating and coordinating. Subordinating Conjunctions A subordinating conjunction connects a dependent clause to an independent clause. A clause is any group of …
• Pore Over vs. Pour Over
• Since pour is a common word and sounds identical to pore, many English speakers use the verb pour in the verb phrase pore over meaning “to meditate or ponder intently.” However, looking closely at their meanings, the correct choice becomes apparent.
• Accept vs. Except
• Do I accept an invitation or except it? If someone is left off of an invitation list, has she been excepted or accepted? What’s the difference between these two terms, and how can we keep them straight? Accept means, most broadly, to take or receive (something offered) or receive with approval or favor, as in “I accept this trophy.” Except has a verb sense of to exclude; …
• Is it i.e. or e.g.? Take the Quiz
• Do you use i.e. or e.g. often in your writing? Take this quiz to test your understanding of these two abbreviations. If you need a refresher on these commonly confused terms, read about the differences between i.e. and e.g.. How did you do? Share your results in the comments!
• Top Misspelled Words Quiz
• There are lots of words that are commonly misspelled as people are looking up meanings on Dictionary.com. We’ve picked just a few from the list—can you figure out the correct spelling for each of these terms? Share your results in the comments!
• Is it Accept or Except? Quiz Yourself
• Many people confuse the words accept and except. Are you ready to accept the challenge…or is it except!? Share your results in the comments!
• The Origin and Grammar of Father’s Day
• While Mother’s Day became an official holiday in 1914, Father’s Day took a little longer to be considered a national holiday. The origin of Father’s Day lies in two unrelated tragic events. 
• Common English Language Mistakes: Can You Avoid Them?
• 11 Common Mispronunciations
• Word Fact: When To Use Whom
• Over the last 200 years, the pronoun whom has been on a steady decline. Despite its waning use in speech and ongoing speculation about its imminent extinction, whom still holds a spot in the English language, particularly in formal writing. Understanding when and how to use this embattled pronoun can set your writing apart. Whom is often confused with who. What’s the difference between these …
• What’s Your Punctuation Mark?
• When to Capitalize “Earth”
• When it comes to writing, this common English word confuses many native speakers who aren’t sure whether to use Earth or earth. Why is this an issue? Earth can be either a proper noun or a common noun. In English, proper nouns (nouns which signify a particular person, place, or thing) are capitalized.
• Acronym or Abbreviation
• Is there a difference between acronyms and abbreviations? Yes.
• Capital vs. Capitol
• Capital and capitol are both commonly used in political contexts and are separated by just one letter, making them frustratingly easy to confuse. When it comes to these two terms, it’s important to note that one has a number of meanings while the other refers to a certain type of building. Capital has many definitions. It can mean “the wealth owned or employed in business …
• Picaresque? A Peek at 7 Words with -esque
• Is It “Different From” or “Different Than”?
• Both different from and different than are accepted in standard American English, and both have been in use for the last 300 years. But is one of these phrases more correct than the other? In formal writing, different from is generally preferred to different than. This preference has to do, in part, with the historical use of the word than. This term entered English as …
• Denotation and Connotation
• If you want to discuss the meaning of a word, it helps to know the difference between denotation and connotation. These two terms are easy to confuse because they describe related concepts. Additionally, both denotation and connotation stem from the Latin word notare, meaning “to note.”
• Five English words without a rhyme
• Empathy vs. Sympathy
• The terms empathy and sympathy are often confused, and with good reason. Both of the words deal with the relationship one has to the feelings and experiences of another. Today we explore the differences between these terms and how they are most commonly used. Both sympathy and empathy have roots in the Greek term páthos meaning “suffering, feeling.” The prefix sym- comes from the Greek …
• Principal vs. Principle
• Is the head of a school called a principal or a principle? These two words are frustratingly similar, leaving even the most experienced English speakers to second-guess which word means what. Today, we’ll discuss the distinct meanings between these easy-to-confuse terms and a little trick to help differentiate between your principals and your principles. A principal is a chief or head, particularly of a school. …
• Allusion vs. Illusion
• The similar spellings and pronunciations of allusion and illusion can cause even seasoned writers to second-guess their choice of words. Today we will examine and clarify the differences between these two terms.
• Do You Give Presents or Gifts?
• Where do the words gift and present come from? Why does English use both? It’s not just so that children can ask for toys in multiple ways. Language is not a linear, predestined development. Even though it may feel as if the language we speak is in some way the logical conclusion of thousands of years of development, every word that we use has a …
• What Is the X in Xmas?
• Here’s a holiday surprise that only the dictionary can provide. Do you find the word “Xmas,” as an abbreviation for Christmas, offensive? Many people do. You won’t find Xmas in church songbooks or even on many greeting cards. Xmas is popularly associated with a trend towards materialism, and sometimes the target of people who decry the emergence of general “holiday” observance instead of particular cultural and …
• Know These 9 Commonly Confused Pairs?
• Double your fun with these irregular plurals!
• Lay vs. Lie
• The difference between the verbs lay and lie is one of English’s thornier cases of confusion. Both words involve something or someone in a horizontal position, but where the two words deviate has to do with who or what is horizontal—the subject of the verb (the one doing the action) or the direct object (the person or thing being acted upon). To lay means “to …
• Does anything rhyme with “orange”?
• Well, we’re going to keep this one short. The rumor that orange doesn’t rhyme with any other word is (unfortunately?) incorrect. Orange rhymes with Blorenge  (a mountain in Wales) and sporange (a technical word for a sac where spores are made). Of course, if you want to write a rhyming poem about oranges, the scientific or geographic research involved might be a little tough. While we’re at it, while silver hangs …
• For All Intents and Purposes vs. For All Intensive Purposes
• Both for all intents and purposes and for all intensive purposes are widely used to mean “for all practical purposes” or “virtually.” But which one is correct? The standard idiom is for all intents and purposes, not for all intensive purposes, though if you were to say these two forms out loud it might be hard to tell the difference between the two.
• What is the difference between warranty and guarantee?
• A warranty is a promise or guarantee given. A warranty is usually a written guarantee for a product and declares the maker’s responsibility to repair or replace a defective product or its parts. A guarantee is an agreement assuming responsibility to perform, execute, or complete something and offering security for that agreement.
• What is the difference between there and their? Your and you’re?
• Their and your are possessive forms used as modifiers before nouns.
• What is the rule for determining whether to use a or an?
• The rule is: Use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound, however the word is spelled.
• What is the difference between might and may?
• May expresses likelihood while might expresses a stronger sense of doubt or a contrary-to-fact hypothetical. T
• What are Informal, Nonstandard, and Slang Words?
• The status or stylistic labels informal and nonformal as well as colloquial are terms applied to written usage at the lowest level on the scale of formality.
• What is it called when you cannot recall a word?
• Most call it the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome (or phenomenon).
• What is the difference between partly and partially?
• Generally, the words may be used interchangeably to refer to some amount or degree that is less than the whole.
• How should I cite a word or a word and its definition?
• There are different ways to do this according to different manuals of style.
• What is the difference between archaic and obsolete words?
• The meaning of these temporal labels can be somewhat different among dictionaries and thesauri. The label archaic is used for words that were once common but are now rare. 
• What is the difference between aluminum and aluminium?
• Aluminum is the American spelling and aluminium is the British spelling for this ductile, malleable silver-white metal.
• Is there such a thing as a true synonym?
• Thesauruses present a catalog of synonyms from which we may pick and choose words to put into our writing, but a thesaurus used alone is a very bad thing because there is no such thing as a true synonym. Every word has its particular place in the language.
• Does bimonthly mean twice a month or every two months?
• The prefix bi- usually means ‘every two’, so bimonthly means ‘every two months’.Semi- means ‘half’ or ‘halfway’, so semimonthly means ‘every two weeks’. However, bimonthly can also mean ‘twice a month’ - but it is rarely used that way. It is best to remember that bi- is “every two” and semi- is “halfway.”
• What Percentage of English Words are Derived from Latin?
• About 80 percent of the entries in any English dictionary are borrowed, mainly from Latin. Over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots.
• Comparatives vs. Superlatives
• The positive form of an adjective or adverb is the basic form listed in a dictionary, e.g.” “red,” “awful” (adjectives); “soon,” “quickly” (adverbs). Adjectives and adverbs can show degrees of quality or amount with the endings -er and -est or with the words more and most or less and least.
• Should I say try and or try to? How about would have or would of?
• Replace try and (I will try and fix it) with try to (I will try to fix it). Some grammarians label try and as incorrect when really it is just very informal and best used in conversation. 
• Where does the phrase cut the mustard come from?
• As with many slang and idiomatic phrases, the origin can be a bit unclear. 
• How can I figure out when to use some time, sometime, or sometimes?
• Most often, sometime is one word: He will wash the car sometime.When some is used adjectivally with time to mean a short time, a long time, or an indefinite time, then it should be written as two words: She has not heard from her friend in some time.
• What is MLA style?
• MLA style is the style recommended by the Modern Language Association for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers. It concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and documentation of sources. 
• Are there any words that use w as a vowel?
• “Cwm” (a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain, sometimes containing a lake; a cirque) and “crwth” (an ancient Celtic musical instrument), both from the Welsh, use w as a vowel - standing for the same sound that oo stands for in boom and booth. “Crwth” is also spelled “crowd.”
• What is the difference between a philharmonic and a symphony?
• A philharmonic is a symphony orchestra or the group that supports it. A symphony is a large orchestra. An orchestra is a large group of musicians who play together on various instruments, usually including strings, woodwinds, brass instruments, and percussion instruments.
• Should I use a singular or plural verb with none?
• None means ‘not one’ or ‘not any’ and it may take either a singular or plural verb.
• What are the 100 most commonly used words in English?
• These are the most common words in English, ranked in frequency order. The first 100 are said to make up about half of all written material.
• What is the difference between a bug and an insect?
• We tend to use the word bug loosely for any very small creature with legs.
• Basic Spelling Rules Explained
• You can teach yourself to be a better speller. It is important to realize that learning to spell is a process that is never complete. Spelling is something that everyone has to pay attention to and keep working at it.
• The Eight Parts of Speech in English
• There are eight major parts of speech.
• What is the difference between the meteorological terms snow flurries and snow showers?
• Snow refers to the partially frozen water vapor which falls in flakes.
• Should I use a singular or a plural verb with a collective noun?
• A collective noun refers to a whole group as a single entity but also to the members of that group.
• How To Use Common Punctuation Marks
• A discussion of each mark follows, in alphabetical order by name of mark. Also includes how to divide words; use of numerals/numbers; possessives; and common errors in punctuation.
• What is the difference between attorney, barrister, lawyer, and solicitor? How about advocate, counsel, counselor, or counselor-at-law?
• Lawyer is a general term for a person who gives legal device and aid and who conducts suits in court.
• Which is right: I wish it were… or I wish it was…?
• There is often confusion about were (a past subjunctive) and was (a past indicative) after wish.
• What are context clues?
• Context clues are hints that an author gives to help define a difficult or unusual word. The clue may appear within the same sentence as the word to which it refers, or it may follow in a preceding sentence. Because most of one’s vocabulary is gained through reading, it is important that you be able to recognize and take advantage of context clues.
• When do you capitalize words like “mother,” “father,” “grandmother,” and “grandfather” when writing about them?
• You should capitalize these when referring to your own relatives: Hello, Mother. A good rule to follow is to capitalize them if they are used as proper nouns.
• What is phonetic spelling?
• Phonetic spelling is the representation of vocal sounds which express pronunciations of words. It is a system of spelling in which each letter represents invariably the same spoken sound. Some schools may use phonetic pronunciations to help children learn the spelling of difficult words, for instance, WEDNESDAY = Wed Nes Day. 
• Are there any English words that have no vowels?
• The answer to this depends what you mean by “vowel” and “word.” There are two things we mean by the word “vowel”: a speech sound made with the vocal tract open or a letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel.
• What’s the difference between average, mean, median, and mode?
• The terms average, mean, median and mode are commonly confused with each other because they all describe ways to talk about sets of numbers. To look at how each term works, let’s say that nine students took a quiz, and the scores were 91, 84, 56, 90, 70, 65, 90, 92, and 30. When someone asks for the average of a group of numbers, they’re most likely asking for the arithmetic mean, a synonymous …
• Supposedly vs. Supposably
• Have you ever heard someone use the word supposably and wondered what they meant? Maybe it’s a synonym for supposedly? Or a mistake? Supposedly and supposably are often confused, perhaps most famously by Joey from Friends.
• Disinterested vs. Uninterested
• If a new movie stars an actor you can’t stand, are you disinterested or uninterested in paying to go see it on opening night? These two words are often used interchangeably, but not by grammarians in the know. Do know the difference between disinterested and uninterested?
• Supper vs. Dinner
• In parts of the US, supper and dinner are used interchangeably to refer to the evening meal, but elsewhere dinner is the midday meal, akin to lunch, and supper, the evening meal. What do these words really mean?
• What’s It Called When You Misinterpret Lyrics?
• Have you ever heard someone sing the wrong lyrics to a song? Maybe a child gave the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” a new meaning by replacing the line “life is but a dream” with “life’s a butter dream,” or an adult belted out “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” instead of “Hold me closer, tiny dancer” to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” Misinterpreted song …
• Words that can’t exist without their negative prefixes
• Why Do Flammable and Inflammable Mean the Same Thing?
• English is a trickster of a language, evidenced by the fact that two words that appear to be antonyms can actually mean the exact same thing. For the most part we manage to bumble along without confusing the two, and can figure out which meaning is intended based on context (although in the case of regardless and irregardless some extra time is needed for teeth-gnashing).
• Is Irregardless a Word?
• Few words draw the ire of grammarians as swiftly as irregardless. The term has been in use in English for over a century, but its validity continues to be the subject of debate. Today we will explore the uses of and controversy surrounding irregardless. Irregardless is a nonstandard synonym for regardless, which means “without concern as to advice, warning, or hardship,” or “heedless.” Its nonstandard …
• Hone In vs. Home In
• Does a plane home in on a target or hone in on it? Does a musician hone her skills or home them? Are these two verbs interchangeable or do they have discrete meanings? Today we explore the origins and uses of hone and home. Hone entered English as a noun for a pointed rock used as a landmark. In the 1400s, it began to be …
• Let Me Count the Ways: 10 Numerical Idioms
• Sherbet or Sherbert?
• In efforts to beat the summer heat, you may have encountered two different spellings of the same scrumptious treat: sherbet and sherbert. Why do both forms exist, and which one is correct?
• Snuck or Sneaked
• You may have heard that snuck as the past tense of sneak is improper English, but does this designation hold water?
• Fiancé vs. Fiancée
• Much debate and change surrounds the terms fiancé and fiancée in the recent past. English speakers borrowed these gendered terms from the French in the mid-19th century, importing both the masculine (fiancé) and feminine (fiancée). This term ultimately derives from Latin, fidare literally meaning “to trust,” combined with the suffix -ance, which is used to form nouns from existing verbs. But which form should you …
• 10 Different Ways To Say Ough! OUGH.
• Continually vs. Continuously
• Today we’re going to explore the meanings and uses of the adverbs continually and continuously. These terms, along with their adjective forms continual and continuous, are often used interchangeably in speech and writing, but style guides urge writers to practice discernment when using continually and continuously. In formal contexts, continually should be used to mean “very often; at regular or frequent intervals,” and continuously to …
• Gray or Grey?
• Google and Vocativ recently paired up to investigate which words people have trouble spelling. They released a list of the most problematic terms by state based on search data, and the word grey appeared a staggering twelve times. So is grey incorrect? Grey and gray are both accepted in the English language. They refer to a color of a neutral tone between black and white, …
• Decode the pieces of our favorite portmanteaus
• Advice vs. Advise
• It’s no wonder that advice and advise are often confused; they are used in similar contexts and separated by just one letter, but that letter signals important distinctions to keep in mind when using the terms. So what are the differences between the two? Advise is a verb meaning “to give counsel to; offer an opinion or suggestion as worth following.” Advice is a noun …
• Is it Just Deserts or Just Desserts?
• Several months ago, Dictionary.com featured the word comeuppance as a Word of the Day. Comeuppance is defined as “deserved reward or just deserts, usually unpleasant.” More than a few devoted users wrote in to inform us that there was a typo in the definition: just deserts should be just desserts. Were our users correct? Was an s left out of this expression by mistake? What …
• Solving the punctuation puzzle
• What do a.m. and p.m. stand for?
• Most English speakers know that a.m. refers to the hours from midnight and noon, and p.m. to the hours from noon and midnight. But what do these ubiquitous abbreviations stand for? The term we associate with the morning, a.m., is an abbreviation the Latin phrase ante meridiem meaning “before midday”; p.m. is an abbreviation of post meridiem, meaning—you guessed it—“after midday.” These two terms help …
• That vs. Which
• To understand when to use that vs. which, it’s important to keep in mind the difference between and restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. In formal American English, that is used in restrictive clauses, and which in used in nonrestrictive clauses. A restrictive clause contains information that limits the meaning of the thing being talked about. For example, in the sentence “Any book that you like must …
• Comprise vs. Compose
• Earlier this year, one intrepid Wikipedia editor made headlines for his remarkable dedication to the mission of purging that website of the phrase “comprised of,” logging approximately 70 to 80 edits per week. This editor, known as Giraffedata, is one of many who hold nonstandard uses of comprise and compose among their top grammatical pet peeves. Today we explore these two terms and the conventions …
• Stationary vs. Stationery
• Stationary and stationery are just one letter off, but that seemingly small difference changes the meaning of these words entirely. These two terms share the Latin root stationarius, which derives from the word station meaning “a standing place.”
• Moot Point vs. Mute Point
• You may have heard coworkers or acquaintances refer to an inconsequential or irrelevant point as a moot point, or maybe you’ve heard mute point instead. Fans of the TV show Friends may have heard a third variation: moo point (because, according to Joey, a cow’s opinion doesn’t matter). But which expression is correct, and what exactly does it mean? The correct phrase is moot point. …
• Compliment vs. Complement
• Your spellchecker won’t flag either compliment or complement, but do you know the difference between these two commonly confused terms? Compliment and complement are commonly confused terms because they’re pronounced alike and originally shared some meanings. But over time, they’ve become separate words with entirely different meanings. Complement with an e is the older of the two terms. Its noun sense has been around in …
• Seven riveting words for befuddling blunders
• Is It “Piqued My Interest” or “Peaked My Interest”?
• The word set we’re examining today can send even experienced writers into a spiral of uncertainty when it comes to word choice, particularly in the context of one expression: is it piqued my interest, peaked my interest, or peeked my interest? The answer is piqued—and here’s why: Pique means “to excite (interest, curiosity, etc.),” as in The suspenseful movie trailer piqued my curiosity. The term …
• Judgement vs. Judgment
• If you’re an avid reader, you’ve likely seen the word judgment spelled two different ways across various sources. Sometimes it appears as we have it here, and other times it appears with an e: judgement. What’s going on here, and which one is correct?
• Bring vs. Take
• Do you bring food to a party, or do you take food to a party? The terms bring and take are often confused, and for good reason. Both words describe the movement of something from one location to another.
• Word Fact: Alright vs. All Right
• Are all right and alright interchangeable? All right has a range of meanings including “safe,” as in Are you all right? or “reliable; good,” as in That fellow is all right.
• Word Fact: Toward vs. Towards
• Do you move toward something or towards something? It turns out, you can do both, though some contexts favor one over the other. According to the Chicago Manual of Style, the preferred form in American English is toward without the -s, while the preferred British English form is towards with the -s. This general rule works with other directional words, including forward, backward, upward, and …
• Word Fact: Well vs. Good
• Someone may have told you you were wrong for saying, I’m good, instead of the more formal I’m well. But is the response I’m good actually incorrect? Not technically. Let’s explore the rules and conventions for these two words. Well is often used as an adverb. Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Good is most widely used as an adjective, meaning that it can …
• Five English Words That Are Utterly Unique
• A lot vs. Alot: 9 Grammatical Pitfalls
• Word Fact: Then vs. Than
• Then and than are among the 100 most frequently used words in the English language. For some, this ubiquity translates into greater opportunity for committing grammatical blunders. Let’s take a look at the differences between these two terms. Then indicates time or consequence, as in the following examples: Bagels were cheaper then; First I’ll drink my orange juice, then eat my bagel; If I drink too …
• Word Fact: Fewer vs. Less
• Misuse of the terms fewer and less will set off alarms in the heads of many language enthusiasts. According to usage rules, fewer is only to be used when discussing countable things, while less is used for singular mass nouns. For example, you can have fewer ingredients, dollars, people, or puppies, but less salt, money, honesty, or love. If you can count it, go for …
• The Curious Chronicle of the Letter C
• The English language is infamously difficult in part because its spelling befuddles even native speakers as letters take on different sounds depending on what letters surround it. Few letters exemplify this trouble more than the third letter of the English alphabet: C. Think about these words: cease, coin, chic, indict, and discrepancy.
• Assure, Ensure, and Insure
• One of our readers recently asked about the differences between assure, ensure, and insure. All three of these words ultimately derive from the Latin word securus meaning “safe.” As with many words that share ancestors, these terms’ meanings overlap thematically, but they’re not necessarily interchangeable. Here’s a look at the key differences. Assure was the first of the three to enter English with a reflexive sense of “to have …
• That’s So Bae: Beyond the Noun Uses of Bae
• Over the last couple of years, the term bae has achieved widespread usage. While the noun form has been around for over 10 years, adjectival and verbal uses, along with other related forms, have more recently started popping up to describe the people and things we love, or at least like-like. Twitter, in particular, is rife with interesting new uses of the term. The popular social …
• Word Fact: What’s the Name for the Dot Over the i and j?
• While many languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, add specific accents to the letters or characters throughout their alphabet, the English alphabet has only two letters that include a diacritic dot. This mark is added to a letter to signal a change in either the sound or meaning of a character. What is the additional name of this curious dot that hovers over the ninth …
• Word Fact: Let’s vs. Lets
• In the comments of our Word Fact post about the difference between affect and effect, Carolyn K. wrote: Please, please, please, I beg you to do Lets vs. Let’s. Every sports team’s media/PR department does it wrong, and it drives me absolutely out of my mind! This lets us address another great topic, since these terms are often confused—let’s figure it out!
• Word Fact: Affect vs. Effect
• Affect and effect are consistently among the most frequently looked up terms at Dictionary.com. The ongoing interest isn’t surprising: both of these words can be used as verbs and nouns, and their meanings overlap thematically. This slippery duo can send even experienced writers into a spiral of uncertainty—especially since many people pronounce them in almost the exact same way. Let’s get to a basic guideline …
• Word Fact: What’s the Difference Between Adverse and Averse?
• The adjectives adverse and averse are related both etymologically and semantically, each having opposition as a central sense. Both come from the Latin root vert- meaning “to turn.”
• A Short History of the Letter B
• The letter B was part of the Phoenician alphabet more than 3000 years ago in 1000 BCE. At that time, the letter was called beth and looked a little different, but it made the sound of b and was second in the alphabet. The shape of the letter resembled the floor plan of a house, and the word beth meant “house.” This is pictured below. In Hebrew, the letter was called beth, bet, or bayt which also …
• Word Fact: With Regard To or With Regards To?
• Recently a couple of readers wrote to Dictionary.com with an issue they had with one of our slideshows from a few years ago. They objected to the following sentence: “Speakers tend to use [obviously]…to emphasize their point with regards to things that aren’t necessarily obvious…”
• The Animal That Inspired the Letter A
• There is quite a bit of mystery surrounding the letter A. From its prestigious first place position to its interesting shape, tracing the first letter of the English alphabet uncovers a history that begins with, of all things, an ox. The letter A is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph—a western Semitic word referring to 
• Word Fact: What Is the Difference Between Torturous and Tortuous?
• Separated by just one pesky letter, these two similar-sounding adjectives can be torturous to keep straight. Or is it tortuous? Let’s take a look at the definitions and applications of each. Both of these terms come from the Latin verb torquere meaning “to twist.” This derivation is easy to detect in the meaning of tortuous, defined as “full of twists, turns, or bends.” Expanding on …
• Word Fact: What’s the Difference Between a Homograph, Homonym, and Homophone?
• These words are often tossed around by teachers and linguists. What do they really mean? The prefix homo- comes from the Greek word homós which meant “one and the same.” So all of these words describe some types of sameness. Homographs are words that are spelled alike, but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations. The root graph comes from the Greek word meaning “drawn …
• Word Fact: Should You Say “Between You and I” or “Between You and Me”?
• Grammar is a combination of rules and conventions. What’s the difference? Well, there are the rules, like a verb must agree with its subject. By that rule, “he say” is incorrect. Then there are conventions, which are uses of language that are common enough that even though they break the “rules” they become “correct” simply through repeated usage. There are other conventions that vary from …
• Caring About Whether You Couldn’t Care Less
• When you want to colloquially express that you don’t care at all about something, you might say “I couldn’t care less.” This phrase first popped up in British English at the turn of the 20th century and is still popular today. In the 1960s, a controversial American variant of this phase entered popular usage: “I could care less.” Many native English speakers, both in the …
• The Difference Between “A While” and “Awhile”
• Few word pairs capture the idiosyncrasies of the English language as effectively as a while and awhile. Both of these terms are expressions of time, and both have been in use for over a century, but one is written with a space while the other is one word. What are the differences in meaning between the two? And what are the appropriate uses of each? …
• Word Fact: What’s the Difference Between “Discreet” and “Discrete”?
• This is another pair of homophones (words that sound alike but are different in meaning, spelling, or both) that can be very confusing. Discreet implies the showing of reserve and prudence in one’s behavior or speech. Discrete means something quite different: “distinct, separate, unrelated.”
• Word Fact: What’s the Difference Between i.e. and e.g.?
• They may be small, but their power to befuddle writers and speakers of the English language is mighty: what’s the difference between i.e. and e.g.? And what are the correct uses of these commonly confused abbreviations? The term i.e. is a shortening of the Latin expression id est, which translates to “that is.” It is used to introduce a rephrasing or elaboration on something that …
• Word Fact: What’s The Origin of Pizza?
• The word pizza is Italian for pie, but how that word wound up in Italian boggles etymologists. It may have come from the Latin pix meaning “pitch” or Greek pitta, but others say that it originated in a Langobardic word bizzo meaning “bite.”
• Apostrophes 101
• The apostrophe may be the most misunderstood punctuation mark in English—there are even websites dedicated to recording its misuse. Most punctuation marks fall between words to separate ideas or grammatical clauses, but the apostrophe is used within words and to combine multiple words. This small mark has two primary uses, signifying either 1. omitted letters or 2. possession. Some common English words can be combined …
• This, It, and the Power of Pronouns
• Earlier this year, bloggers at Gawker left behind internet slang for a formal style more in line with the New York Times than gossip blogs. As Gawker attempts to redefine itself as a publishing authority, its new editorial guidelines have adapted to explicitly forbid the language that Gawker’s readers recognize as an identifying component of its brand. One banned term stood out amid the roster …
• Enuf or Enough? Why Is English Spelling So Random?
• Have you had enough (or enuf) trouble spelling to make you want to scream (or skreem?) You are not alone. Since the 17th century, scholars have been protesting the irregularities that occur in English spelling. Reform movements can boast such iconic English-speaking figures Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and Theodore Roosevelt. English is currently the most widely-spoken language on the planet, yet it is …
• Getting to Know the Em Dash
• As we mentioned in our recent post about the hyphen, the en dash and the em dash are two of the most misunderstood punctuation marks in English. How should you use them? The en dash is primarily used in continuing numbers or dates taking the place of “to” or “through,” as in “The festival will be held from May 2-4.” The em dash is an …
• How Do You Use a Hyphen?
• The hyphen, along with its cousins the en and em dash, may be the most misunderstood punctuation mark in English. Hyphens are used to join parts of a word or compound phrase, as in ex-wife, full-length mirror, and by-the-book negotiations. As the Chicago Manual of Style puts it, “Far and away the most common spelling questions for writers and editors concern compound terms—whether to spell …
• Wednesday’s Named for Two Very Different Gods
• The name Wednesday derives from two mighty but distinct gods. The Old English word for Wednesday indicates that the day was named for the Germanic god Woden. In Romance languages, the name is derived from the Roman god Mercury. (For example, Wednesday is mercredi in French and
• Is It Daylight “Saving” Time or Daylight “Savings” Time?
• Come the second Sunday in March, most Americans are turning their clocks ahead one hour, or springing forward, in preparation for the summer months.   
• Take Time to Celebrate a Dying Art: Handwriting
• January 23 marks an obscure holiday that Dictionary.com, despite being a website, fully endorses: National Handwriting Day. Handwriting Day is not just a holiday dedicated to penmanship. Today is about you, and what makes you you. Your handwriting is unique and it is personal. It is as important and distinctive as your fingerprints. It doesn’t matter if it looks like chicken scratch or like Spencerian …
• Does Your Handwriting Really Say Something About Your Personality?
• Graphologists, or self-proclaimed handwriting experts, claim that it does. Specifically they claim that individuals who share certain personality traits write in a similar fashion, so graphologists analyze handwriting to deduce the character traits of the writer. In the early 1900s, Milton Newman Bunker invented the most common graphology technique called graphoanalysis. (Other methods of graphology predate Bunker’s work.) His approach relies on the stroke shape …
• Autocorrect: How does it work? Do we need it?
• Autocorrect is almost as old as personal computers. Even some of the earliest word processors had a spellcheck feature that suggested alternative words if a word you typed did not appear in its internal dictionary. Certainly, today, autocorrect has come a long way since the Cupertino effect. What’s the Cupertino effect? Well, in its early days, word processors would replace the word “cooperation” with “Cupertino” …
• How Does One Word Become Two?
• My daughter has hit the two-word stage. According to the textbooks, this is supposed to happen at about 20 months, and so Dahlia is right on time—and I’ve been waiting for this for roughly, well, 20 months. I’m well aware of the warnings about how life gets harder rather than easier when your child can actually communicate, but I’m ready. We seem to be on …
• Is Text Messaging Ruining English?
• With every generation come cries that teenagers are destroying the language with their newfangled slang. The current grievance harps on the way casual language used in texts and instant messages inhibits kids from understanding how to write and speak “properly.” While amateur language lovers might think this argument makes sense, experts say this is not at all the case. In fact, linguists say teenagers, far …
• Lay vs. Lie: Miley, Sufjan, and Grammatical Snafus in Pop Stardom
• Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus addressing her use of the word laying in her song “Get It Right.” The lyric in question: “I been laying in this bed all night long.” Before addressing the grammatical sin of “I been,” Sufjan explains that Miley should have used the word lying in place of laying. What’s the difference between the two?
• What does “literally” have to do with the ironic uses of “definitely” and “totally”?
• With all the recent hullabaloo about the figurative sense of literally, language enthusiasts have given much thought to this often maligned term. Recently we discussed how the metaphorical extension of literally is nothing new—it’s been around since the 1700s—and now we’d like to explore a few other adverbs and their ironic uses. I believe that recent uses of definitely and totally suggest that the linguistic development …
• In Defense of the Figurative Use of Literally
• Recently the wordsmiths of the United States have availed themselves once again to decry the figurative use of the word literally. This particular spate of analysis finds its origins in a Reddit post titled, “We did it guys, we finally killed English,” which featured an image of Google’s definition for the word. Since that popular post, journalists and language experts have added their voices to the loudening …
• Why do people end sentences with “so”? What effect does it have on conversation?
• Welcome to Part II of our discussion on the word so. Last week we explored the sentence-initial so, and today we’ll be looking at ending sentences with so—a phenomenon called “the dangling so.” Despite its widespread usage, this construction seems to irk people even more than the sentence-initial so; there’s even a Facebook group called “I Hate People Who End Sentences with ‘so…’” Just to clarify, …
• Do you use “so” to manage conversations?
• Over the last few years, lovers of language have casually observed an increase in speakers beginning sentences with the word so. What are some new ways in which so is being used in colloquial speech, and what cues do these utterances send to listeners? Consider the following example: Speaker 1: Dr. Johnson, when did you start studying this disorder? Speaker 2: So, I had noticed …
• In the News: Yeezus, Simile, and Metaphor
• If you’ve tuned in to the recent media blitz surrounding Kanye West and his new genre-bending, chart-topping album Yeezus, you may have picked up on a theme: this man likes to pronounce his greatness. He does it in a myriad of ways. In his recent compulsively quotable interview in New York Times, he did it by likening himself to Steve Jobs: “I am undoubtedly, you …
• More Thoughts On the Nonstandard Uses of “Slash”
• A couple weeks ago Anne Curzan wrote an article for the Lingua Franca blog about new slang uses of the word slash. This article particularly interested me because I, like her students, have been using the slash in these ways for the last five-plus years. As a linguist slash huge nerd, the first thing I did after reading Curzan’s article was search my personal corpus …
• How do you use this slippery piece of punctuation: the slash?
• The slash (/)—sometimes called a slant, a solidus, a stroke, or a virgule—is a commonly employed symbol in the English language. Whatever you want to call this piece of punctuation, its role in English has greatly changed over time.
• Are Scrabble tile values in need of an overhaul?
• Invented by out-of-work architect Alfred Butts during the Great Depression, Scrabble is a staple of word lovers’ lives. The popularity of this beloved game took off in the mid-1950s and has been an essential part of the canon of classic board games ever since. To determine Scrabble’s tile values, Alfred Butts carefully analyzed letter frequency in various periodicals, including the front page of the New York …
• Words You Want to Banish in 2013
• Last week, we discussed the Worst Words of 2012. We were originally inspired by past lists from Lake Superior State University in Michigan. Every year they compile words that were misused, overused, and abused, and this week they released their list for 2013, which included some choice words that we had overlooked:
• The Worst Words of 2012
• 2012 has been an interesting time in the life of our lexicon. From new coinages to new usages, English has had a nice growth spurt. Some neologisms quickly outgrow their usefulness, or through overuse, they become meaningless, like an overplayed song on the radio. Here are a few terms that many people have grown tired of in 2012.
• Could English exist without the letter G?
• Can you imagine a world in which the sounds of G and C were both represented by the letter C? Try to imacine it. Believe it or not, for much of their history, the sounds of C and G were represented by the same symbol. Eventually, however, both sounds received their own differentiated symbols.
• Does Grammar Matter in the Workplace?
• Certain employers say it’s important to them that their workers exhibit good grammar. But is bad grammar a valid reason to bar someone from a job? Recently, in the Harvard Business Review, Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and founder of Dozuki, wrote an article called “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar.” In the article, Wiens argues that it is important to
• Were P and R Once the Same Letter?
• Do you ever stop and look at the shape of our alphabet? Each letter looks natural to us now, but all those lines and circles have unique histories. It’s easy to make assumptions that our letters make sense, that they developed in some orderly logical way, and one reasonable assumption would be that P and R are related to each other based on their form.
• Heat and Thunder in the NBA Finals: A Grammatical Nightmare
• Why do the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder sound so odd? Most sports teams—the Bulls, the Knicks, the Lakers, the Celtics—are ordinary plurals. However, the Heat and the Thunder are mass nouns; they are unquantifiable. You cannot have five thunders or three heats, even though there are 12 players on a roster.
• Can you see the difference between those symbols?
• Though one of the least-used letters, X has a remarkable way of getting attention. Last year we talked about the varied uses of X: Gen X, Xbox, XOXO, the X chromosome. British dramatist Ben Jonson wanted to remove the 24th letter from the alphabet
• What does this guy have to do with the comma? He invented it.
• The comma’s ancestors have been used since Ancient Greece, but the modern comma descended directly from Italian printer Aldus Manutius. (He’s also responsible for italics and the semicolon!) In the late 1400s when Manutius was working, a slash mark (/, also called a virgule) denoted a pause in speech. (Virgule is still the word for comma in French.) Manutius made the slash lower in relation …
• English used to have gendered nouns?! Yes!
• If you speak another language like Spanish or German, you are familiar with grammatical gender. In Romance languages (and many others), nouns have a gender. In French, a chair is la chaise, a feminine noun, and a hat is le chapeau, a masculine noun. But did you know that English used to have gendered nouns too?
• What is the controversy that “hopefully” caused?
• Last week, the Associated Press Stylebook announced a significant change in their guidelines: the word “hopefully” (as in “it is hoped”) can now appear in newspapers. According to the Washington Post, this makes them barbarians. You may be wondering, what is the AP Stylebook? And why does it matter? Groups of professionals compile style guides to standardize editing practices within their field. (Did you have …
• We added more than 300 updated and new definitions to Dictionary.com!
• We updated our dictionary! You now have a new and improved Dictionary.com. How can something be both “new” and “improved”? We added 183 new words and updated 146 existing definitions to reflect our ever-evolving language. We also added more detailed notes about word usage, word history, and synonyms to some very particular words
• When did the letter U enter the alphabet? It will surprise you.
• There was no letter U in the alphabet. Well, that’s not the entire story. There was the sound for the letter we call U, but it didn’t look like U. It looked like V. The Classical Latin alphabet had only 23 letters, not the 26 that we have today. (This is why the W looks like a double V but is pronounced like a double …
• English is read from left to right, but are some languages written from right to left or from top to bottom?
• News flash: Twitter now comes in 28 languages - including Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu, which are written from right-to-left. Twitter has long supported right-to-left text from users, but it now has instructions and can display hashtags from right-to-left as well. Why are some languages written from right to left and others from left to right?
• What are the most-used words in English?
• What word will you say the most often in your life? The word you use most commonly is probably the word all English-speakers use: the. What are the most-used words in the English language?
• Why Do We Capitalize I?
• Why do we capitalize the first-person pronoun, I? The short answer is because we do. But that’s not a very satisfactory answer. Even though it feels natural to English speakers, capitalizing I is unusual. In fact, English is the only language that does. Germanic and Romantic languages typically have some conventions for capitalizing proper nouns, like Deutschland (in German) or Place de la Concorde (in …
• Where is the Middle East? The Near East? The Far East?
• It’s no surprise that many of our place names are relatively new to English. Some (like Far East) were born during British colonization, but “Near East” and “Middle East” are more modern than that. The word “east” is derived from the Sanskrit word “usas” meaning “dawn” or “morning.” From the perspective of Europe and Asia, this makes sense because the sun rises in the east. …
• Why do lowercase letters look very different than their uppercase counterparts?
• Take a moment and open the last email you wrote. It’s okay. We’ll wait. Now imagine if you had to write it out on paper, not with a ballpoint pen, but with a pen that you had to dip into a bowl of ink every few words. And make sure not to drip any ink on that expensive parchment. Is your wrist hurting yet?
• Dictionary.com’s Exclusive Interview with Will Shortz: Part II
• Here is the final installment of our interview with Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times’ Crossword Puzzle and NPR’s Puzzlemaster. Find out his favorite crossword word and why English is the best language to make crosswords in.
• A Brief History of the Letter H
• Though it’s a high-value letter in Scrabble and Words with Friends, H is a relatively common letter. Statistically speaking, it is the eighth most commonly used letter in the English language. That’s because H is usually paired with other consonants like wh, ch, sh, and gh. H is found in the most common two-letter pair (th) and in the most common three-letter combination (the).  (The letter …
• Should overused words be banished?
• Earlier this week NPR’s All Things Considered announced what they called the 2011 Banished Words of the Year. Compiled by a former journalist at Lake Superior State University in Michigan, the list is an inversion of the 2011 most important words list. Rather than words that accurately describe the past year’s events, the Banished Words are terms that were misused, overused or generally useless, to …
• Why Are People from the Netherlands Called Dutch?
• As we’ve discussed before, if you live in Michigan, you may consider yourself a Michigander or a Michiganian. (Check it out.) But why are demonyms so various and seemingly random? A demonym is any name derived from a place. The word “demonym” was coined by Paul Dickson, an editor at Merriam-Webster, in his 1997 book Labels for Locals. Californian, Frenchmen, New Yorker, and Swiss are …
• Why did “noon” used to mean 3:00?
• The biggest surprises tend to hide in plain sight. We’ve found this to be true with the origins of words like hello (check it out), and especially the somewhat naughty roots of Miss (read about that here.) With noon, we’ve uncovered a remarkable fact that will change how you think of 12:00. First, some essential background. Clocks and watches are relatively
• What parts of the brain distinguish words from sentences?
• In English class, your grade doesn’t differentiate between how large your vocabulary is and how well you write a sentence. But recent research shows that your brain does! This evidence may mean that increasing your vocabulary won’t necessarily influence fluency when learning a new language. Two parts of the brain, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, play a large part in processing language. Broca’s area has been linked …
• What does Veterans Day have to do with one of the most common grammar mistakes?
• What do apostrophes have to do with this federal holiday? Well, there’s a confusing apostrophe in Veterans’ Day—or is there? Veterans Day is often incorrectly written as “Veteran’s Day” or “Veterans’ Day.” “Veteran’s Day” would definitely be incorrect because it means a day for only one veteran. While “Veterans’ Day” does encompass multiple veterans, that spelling is incorrect according to
• What are the ( ) { } [ ] and ? ?? When should we use them and where they come from?
• Though these odd symbols—( ), [ ], { }, and ? ?—regularly appear on our books and screens, they all have odd, unexpected origins. The most familiar of these unusual symbols is probably the ( ), called parentheses. One of them ( is called a parenthesis, and as a pair the plural are parentheses. Parenthesis literally means “to put beside” from the Greek roots par-, …
• Why can’t you say chmlk? What makes a vowel?
• In elementary school, we all learned the vowels of the English language: a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y. But what makes a vowel a vowel? Vowels and consonants are essentially two different categories of sounds that linguists use to better understand how language sounds work. The study of the sounds that human beings can produce is called phonetics. It’s a sub-speciality of linguistics. According to phoneticians, a …
• What does it mean to be “fluent” in a language?
• In 2011, the Arizona Board of Education considered if teachers who speak with an accent are fluent in English. (Read the full story here.) We have all heard how differently people in London, New York, or Baton Rouge speak English, but are those different speakers still fluent in English? Where does accent stop and fluency begin? Fluency is defined as being able to speak and …
• Why are some letters tied together?
• It is hard to remember that fonts originated in handwriting, but occasionally reminders, like ligatures, pop up. “Ligature” literally means to bind or tie up, so when two letters are tied together in script, it is called a ligature. Medieval scribes combined letters that shared some part, so they could write faster and conserve space on the page. For example, rather than write fi, they combined the tittle …
• You can debunk something, but why can’t you bunk something?
• As readers, we recognize prefixes, like dis-, in-, non- and un-, as expressing negation. We immediately know that “unfair” means “not fair.” However, there are some clear exceptions to these rules. Such anomalies can cause  confusion for a few reasons. For one, the prefix in- also literally means in, such as inquire, inclose, and insure. The word impromptu for instance comes directly from the Latin …
• Is it ever correct to say “didja?” What is the official term for “didja,” “sorta,” and “d’ya?”
• Didja ever think that there are ways of speaking that feel perfectly comfortable that would seem wrong if you wrote them down? Sorta like the way this sentence is written. Lemme tell you ‘bout this very phenomenon, relaxed pronunciation. Pronunciation is defined as “the conventional patterns of treatment of the sound and stress patterns of a syllable or word.” Relaxed pronunciation, also called word slurring …
• Why are zero and the letter “O” both circles? The answer involves both science and mysticism
• Long, long ago, typewriters made no distinction between the number 0 and the letter O. While the two share the same shape, the origin of both number and letter are quite different. Let’s look at the distinct astrological and optical inspirations that created these seemingly identical symbols. Derived from the Semitic letter ayin and inspired by the circular eye-shaped Egyptian hieroglyph for “eye,” the letter O …
• Is the Semicolon Just Plain Silly?
• The semicolon: is it the most maddening and mysterious punctuation mark? Many writers avoid it altogether. When trying to express thoughts clearly, who needs a “semi” anything? Our task is not to sway your feelings, but to simply provide some definition to your like or dislike. When exactly should one use a semicolon? Fundamentally, what’s the difference between a colon and a semicolon? The word …
• What is Mrs. short for?
• History and etiquette tell us that Mister and Missus, known by the contractions Mr. and Mrs., are the proper form of address for men and women. Beneath the surface of these everyday honorifics lies a linguistic glitch that has spawned social havoc since “Mrs.” entered mainstream English in the 17th century. Mister is a direct variant of master, which in turn derives from the Old
• New law bans use of confusing words and sentences in government documents. Read the results
• On October 13, 2010, President Obama signed into law the “United States Plain Writing Act of 2010.” Thirteen years after President Clinton issued his own “Plain Writing in Government” memorandum, the revised set of guidelines states that by July of this year all government agencies must simplify the often perplexing bureaucratic jargon used in documents produced for the American public. Gone are the grammatically longwinded sentences, …
• Why Was Z Removed from the Alphabet?
• What letter is used most rarely in English? Poor lonely z finishes up the alphabet at number 26. The final letter, z’s history includes a time when it was so infrequently used that it was removed altogether. The Greek zeta is the origin of the humble z. The Phoenician glyph zayin, meaning “weapon,” had a long vertical line capped at both ends with shorter horizontal …
• What does “transgender” mean exactly, and how does the English language handle gender?
• There is an increase in public discourse on transgender rights this spring. Nevada is considering a bill that would provide discrimination protection to transgender people in housing, public accommodation and job protections, similar to laws in place for other protected minorities. A bill in Maine addressing public accommodation for transgender people is also in the news. Meanwhile, hate crime charges are being considered in the …
• What was the original name of the letter X, and how many sounds can it represent?
• We’ve explored the meaning behind the “X” in Xmas, Xbox, and even its use in friendly and amorous correspondence (XOXO).  Now it’s time to take a closer look at the origin of this multi-functional, twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. With its long, ambiguous history and multiple phonemes, the letter “X” is quite a dark horse. Since its inception, the letter “X” has struggled to …
• Why do we use capital and lower case letters, and how did both types come to be?
• Capitalization rules tend to vary by language and can be quite complicated.  It is widely understood that the first word of a sentence and all proper nouns are always capitalized. However, what is not so clear is the origin of the upper case distinction that has become common practice, especially in regards to Modern English. To unmask the origin of the capital letter we need …
• The Man Responsible For The Letter “J”
• Recently we asked you to let us know which of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet you’d like us to investigate. A resounding number of you suggested the consonant /j/. From its humble beginnings as a Roman numeral to its eventual tenth position in the English alphabet, /j/ has had quite a linguistic journey. “J” is a bit of a late bloomer; after all, it …
• Are emoticons words, symbols, or what? Consider this possibility . . .
• You may not like it, but we all use them. Whether it is in a text message, an instant chat, or a casual email, emoticons appear in written communication to indicate the tone, humor or feeling of a message. As communication moves away from personal interaction to a text-only environment, emoticons fill the void left by the absence of the tone of voice and facial …
• Gaddafi, Kadafi or Qaddafi? Why Is the Libyan Leader’s Name Spelled So Many Different Ways?
• Take a look at any news source today and you’ll see the name of Libya’s de facto leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Look a little closer and you’ll see a multitude of spellings for the notorious politician’s surname such as Gaddafi, Kadafi and Qaddafi. Why does a name that has been making headlines for decades have so many varied spellings? Transliteration - the transcription of a word, or …
• Why does the letter Q almost always need to appear with a U in order to be useful?
• Scrabble players are acutely aware that Q is a tricky letter. To use a Q in the game, a player must also find an available U. The fact that Q is the second most rarely used letter in the alphabet certainly doesn’t make using Q any easier. Let’s quest towards resolving the questions of quarrelsome Q, the 17th letter in the alphabet. In English QU is …
• If “w” is double u, why is it made of two v’s?
• The 23rd letter of the English alphabet is a bit of a wonder. The humble “w” is the only letter of the alphabet with a three-syllable name. It is also the only letter with a name that does not indicate its phonetic use. The complications of “w” are doublefold because of its name, ‘double u’ and its shape, ‘double v’. What’s going on here? In English, …
• Do funky fonts actually help you remember?
• In 1999, two graphic designers from Indianapolis raised a stir when they tried to discourage the use of Comic Sans MS, the silly-looking font designed by Vincent Connare and modeled after the text in American comic books. The designers observed that a font is the orthographic (written) equivalent of one’s tone of voice, and that Comic Sans was essentially like a squeaky-helium voice but in …
• What is the literal meaning of “eleven?”
• What does the number eleven mean? And what unusual words and expressions incorporate eleven? The word derives from the Old English endleofan, which means “one left,” as in “one left over ten.” This literal sense is found in the colloquial expression “the eleventh hour,” which is used to talk about doing something at the last possible moment. For example, “In the eleventh hour, Sophie switched the caterer …
• What do the Z, I, and P in “ZIP code” stand for? And what do the numbers represent?
• It’s a hectic time of year for the U.S. Postal Service. Those packages you ordered on Cyber Monday are steadily arriving. You’re probably even receiving a few holiday greetings the old-fashioned way — snail mail. The half million employees who work for the USPS rely heavily on the five- or nine-digit ZIP codes for efficient and reliable mail delivery. So, it makes sense that the …
• Is Ironic the Most Abused Word in English?
• “That is sooooo ironic.” This sentence is used frequently — and usually incorrectly — in American English. Often the word “ironic” is misused to remark on a coincidence, such as “This is the third time today we’ve run into each other. How ironic.” It is also mistakenly used to describe something out of the
• What the “x” in “Xbox” stands for, plus when did “x” start to mean “the unknown?”
• No letter in the English language gets around like X. The 24th letter of the alphabet shows up everywhere, from the popular Xbox to standing in for a signature on legal documents. It represents a chromosome, signifies the multiplication process, and marks “the spot” on treasure maps. Let’s explore just a few of the uses of this versatile letter.
• What does Veteran’s Day have to do with an incredible combination of “11?”
• Today, 11/11, is the 315th day of the year. It’s also Veterans Day, a federal holiday honoring all military veterans.
• Want to meet two extinct letters of the alphabet? Learn what “thorn” and “wynn” sounded like
• The English alphabet, as you likely know, is made up of 26 letters. But it wasn’t always that way. Before we get to which letters were late additions, let’s explain a bit about Old English. English was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, also known as Anglo-Saxon. The Angles and Saxons
• If your last name ends in “-ez,” what does it mean? And what last name means “bold voyager?”
• A few weeks back we asked readers to suggest last names to be explored and explained. The surnames with the most requests happened to end in -ez. We like to make you happy. First, we need to touch on how many names originating in Spain function. Most Hispanic surnames, including those that end in -ez, fall into a few general categories.  Many family names are based …
• The Dollar (And Other Things) Sign
• Check out the number four key on your keyboard. Stamped above it is one of the most powerful symbols in the world: the almighty dollar sign. But the symbol doesn’t just mark the US currency. Originally—and to this day—the emblem also represents the peso. Several Spanish-speaking countries consider it their own. Peso literally means “weight” in Spanish. The origin of the dollar (or peso) sign is uncertain. However, the reigning theory …
• What is it called when you say “um,” “eh,” or “well. . .” Are these considered words?
• Have you ever had to listen to a recording of a conversation, or worse, had to transcribe one? You quickly learn that everyday speech isn’t exactly made of flowing repartee. Grunts, coughs, sighs ? they aren’t pleasant to listen back to, but these sounds are probably more common than the words between them. Remember that face-to-face communication is a different beast than
• You may already know what the last name “Smith” means but what about, say, “Garcia” or “Miller?”
• In the 1990 and 2000 Census results, Smith was the most popular last name in the United States. Maybe your last name is Smith, or Garcia or Miller: do you know the meaning and the history of this part of you that you write and say daily? Surname means “the name that a person has in common with other family members, as distinguished from a Christian name or given name; …
• Help us solve Sarah Palin’s latest language mystery
• Today, the former governor of the great state of Alaska sent a message on Twitter containing the following phrase : “Who hijacked term: ‘feminist’? A cackle of rads who want to crucify  . . .” Given Palin’s high profile and her penchant for controversy we can’t help but try to decipher the use of “cackle” in this context. Of the many senses of cackle, none really …
• Sure, “ain’t” gets the attention, but what do “am’nt,” “h’aint” and “b’aint” mean?
• What’s all the fuss over ain’t about? Is there really anything wrong with the word? Or is it even a word? The colloquialism ain’t is a nonstandard contraction of the following: “am not,” “are not,” “is not,” “have not,” and “has not.” It is also used in some dialects as a contraction for “do not,” “does not,” and “did not.” For example, “We ain’t got any milk left.”
• Thinking Through “Twenty”
• Think about what you take for granted. Do you ever wonder why (or if?) “America” is named after Amerigo Vespucci? Why we call green green? Why a lot of words start to sound fake after you say them over and over again? With this mindset, let’s talk about twenty. Twenty is the natural number sandwiched between nineteen and twenty-one. The word comes from the Old English twegen, which …
• Sarah Palin says “refudiate” and creates a word controversy. What’s the big problem with refudiate?
• Yesterday, Sarah Palin offered her opinion on a proposal to build a mosque in the vicinity of the September 11th site. Her words: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” This tweet is a pundit‘s dream, a perfect storm for mud-slinging, flak, fuss, hurrahs, miffs, polemics, rows, rumpuses, and maybe some …
• The YMCA is now officially just “the Y.” But is Y a vowel or consonant?
• The YMCA has announced its first branding change in 43 years. The organization will now be known officially as the Y. This may seem a no-brainer to Americans who have casually referred to the Young Men’s Christian Association by its familiar abbreviation
• Have you ever noticed “FICO” by your credit score? What it means
• When was the last time you ordered a credit report? The paper document is abstruse enough, but you have to maneuver through the morass of oddly-named companies that produce them — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and more. The process is abstract, but the results are concrete. There’s some new, and bad, news about those infamous numbers. More than a
• This is a trick question: What do the A, C, and T of the ACT test mean?
• Into the heat and happy languor of summer, a chilly reminder of grades and scores is smacking students. Right now, people who took the ACT national exam in June are learning their scores. This may explain why the teens around you seem more ecstatic, despondent, or confused than usual. You probably know how it works: kids take the ACT or
• The Meaning of “Rosh Hashana”
• ?October 2, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology ?36 Comments
• Today is Rosh Hashana, the day that marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year. At sunset today, families and friends will gather to pray and then eat the traditional honey and apples, which symbolize the hope for a sweet new year. Rosh Hashana comes from Hebrew and most simply put means “beginning of the year.” Why isn’t […]
• october
• The Origin of October
• ?October 1, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology ?103 Comments
• October is here, and in the northern hemisphere that often means the days are flush with falling leaves, chilling weather, and growing anticipation for the holiday season. The tenth month by our Gregorian calendar, October shares a root with octopus and octothorpe—the Latin octo-, meaning “eight.” In the Roman calendar, which had only ten months, […]
• september
• Why the Ninth Month Comes from the Word “Seven”
• ?September 12, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology, History ?566 Comments
• For many, the month of September signals the end of summer, the beginning of autumn, and the start of a new school year. With respect to the calendar, September marks the beginning of the months that signify nothing other than their numerical position in the year.
• hipster
• What’s the Origin of the Term Hipster?
• ?September 6, 2016 ?by: Ammon Shea ?in: Language, Word Stories ?42 Comments
• Hipsters have become simultaneous objects of ridicule and desire, associated with the new and in vogue, and also with an absurd form of consumerism. Why do we call them hipsters, and how did this word, born of jazz music in the early 1930s, make the transition to describe young men in skinny pants and classes […]
• Gold medal
• Go for the Gold: The Strange History of Olympic Medals
• ?August 5, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, History, Language ?102 Comments
• At the first Olympic Games back in 776 BCE, competitors did not receive medals. Instead the top athletes were crowned with wreaths made of olive leaves. This tradition continued until Roman emperor Theodosius I (or perhaps his son) abolished the Olympics around the year 400 CE. The revival of the Olympics dates from the late […]
• august, chalkboard
• Which Overachiever Is August Named For?
• ?August 1, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology ?144 Comments
• August has arrived. If you’re in Europe, it’s likely you’re taking an extended holiday. If you’re anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, you might just be trying to stay cool. August is the eighth month of the Gregorian calendar, and the sixth month of the Roman calendar. Its original name was Sextilus, Latin for “sixth month.” In […]
• New_Words_blog
• Zika, Athleisure & Hot Take: New Words Added to the Dictionary
• ?July 19, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?10 Comments
• In our latest update to Dictionary.com, we added more than 300 new words and definitions, and revised over 1,700 entries. Many of the newly added terms are pulled straight from the headlines like Daesh, intersectionality, warmist, woke, and Zika virus. Several of the new words relate directly to the media, including lamestream, presstitute, and hot […]
• Place de la Bastille
• What is a Bastille?
• ?July 14, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology, History ?44 Comments
• On Bastille Day, the world parties in the name of France. But do you know what makes Bastille Day so important not just for France but the history of all democracies? The occasion is typically honored with military parades and copious consumption of libations. This mix of weapons and wooziness arguably sums up the legacy of July 14, 1789.
• star-spangled banner 2
• The Forgotten Verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
• ?July 1, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, History, Language ?894 Comments
• Do you know all the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner”? Many people have difficulty memorizing the lyrics of the first verse of this song, which is commonly performed at sports events and other public gatherings. But did you know that there are three additional verses that we almost never hear? In 1814, the poet and […]
• june, letterpress
• Why Is the Sixth Month Called June?
• ?June 3, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: etymology ?338 Comments
• For students and teachers alike, June is often their favorite month. School’s out and the days are long. But where did the first month of summer get its name? In Old English, this month was often referred to as simply “midsummer month.” It also may have been called “sere-month,” meaning “dry and withered,” though this […]
• spelling bee
• What Does the “Bee” in “Spelling Bee” Mean Exactly?
• ?May 16, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology, Language ?555 Comments
• As spellers from across the country and around the globe gather to take part in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, let’s try to settle a basic question: Where does the bee in “spelling bee” come from?
• William Shakespeare, neolgoism
• Shakespeare’s Novel Neologisms We Still Use
• ?April 22, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Education, etymology, History, Language, Literature ?223 Comments
• In honor of William Shakespeare, we’d like to share some words popularized by the Bard himself. Shakespeare died on April 23rd and was baptized on April 26th; his actual birth date remains unknown. Did Shakespeare coin the following terms? Probably not—these words may have been in conversational usage when he committed them to the page, or […]
• bunny
• What’s the Difference Between a Bunny, a Rabbit and a Hare?
• ?March 21, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: etymology, Nature ?201 Comments
• The religious content of Easter is relatively easy to explain and understand. The holiday’s substance starts to blur, however, when it comes to a certain anthropomorphized bunny, baskets, pastel colors and eggs. There’s far too much in this semantic basket to tackle; let’s start with the crucial question: what’s the difference between a rabbit, a […]
• gaelic
• Why Irish Spelling Looks Familiar Yet Strange
• ?March 17, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?89 Comments
• March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, or Lá Fhéile Pádraig (Irish), named for one of the most recognized of the patron saints of Ireland, Saint Patrick, who died on this date around 493 A.D. While St. Patrick is famous for allegedly driving snakes out of Ireland, he is also responsible for the oldest known Gaelic […]
• leap
• Why Do We Have Leap Year?
• ?February 28, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: etymology, History, Science ?76 Comments
• Even though the standard calendar year is 365 days, the Earth actually takes 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds to go completely around the sun. (This is called a solar year.) In order to keep the calendar cycle synchronized with the seasons, one extra day is (usually) added every four years as […]
• Adele at the Grammys
• There’s a Word for Why Adele’s Music Makes You Cry
• ?February 15, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: In the News, Language ?364 Comments
• Adele, whose single “Hello” debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 list in 2015, will be performing at this year’s Grammy Awards. Year after year, one thing remains constant with the Grammy winner’s music: It makes the tears flow.
• Love Book
• Synonyms for the Season: Valentine’s Day
• ?February 12, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, Language ?7 Comments
• Are you tired of filling out your greeting cards with “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetheart!” every year? Are you one clichéd love note away from throwing in the towel altogether? We understand your pain and are here to help you woo that special someone without triggering their gag reflex.
• they
• Gender-Neutral Singular They
• ?January 15, 2016 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Language ?26 Comments
• On January 8th, 2016, approximately 300 linguists crammed into a room to vote on the American Dialect Society’s 2015 Word of the Year. From microaggression to man bun to emoji with x-rated connotations, dozens of lexical items were debated, but only one could take home the ultimate honor of Word of the Year. This year […]
• manbun
• Of Man Buns and Moms: New Words of 2015
• ?January 6, 2016 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Language ?11 Comments
• Since 1990, the American Dialect Society has held a Word of the Year vote, which is open to the public. This year’s vote takes place on January 8, 2016 in Washington DC. Over the past few weeks, linguists have been discussing nominations for various categories, and the ADS website has a nice roundup of 2015 Word […]
• Janus
• Which Two-headed God Is January Named After?
• ?January 1, 2016 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology ?559 Comments
• January is often considered the month for deep reflection. We look back at the year behind us, bemoaning our regrets and celebrating our successes. And then, we look forward to the future year. We make well-meaning resolutions and hope for the best. So, in this way, we’re all a little bit like Janus, the Roman […]
• Boxing Day, boxes
• Does Boxing Day Have Anything to Do with Boxing?
• ?December 26, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology ?66 Comments
• In the US, the word boxing usually refers to two athletes stepping into a padded ring, each having the intention of knocking the other off his feet. Also in the US, the holiday known as Boxing Day is generally obscure. In Britain, the celebration is ubiquitous. Let’s spend a minute with the origin of the box in […]
• gift, present, Christmas
• Do You Give Presents or Gifts?
• ?December 23, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Grammar, Language ?170 Comments
• Where do the words gift and present come from? Why does English use both? It’s not just so that children can ask for toys in multiple ways. Language is not a linear, predestined development.
• XMAS
• What Is the X in Xmas?
• ?December 21, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, Language ?1,003 Comments
• Here’s a holiday surprise that only the dictionary can provide. Do you find the word “Xmas,” as an abbreviation for Christmas, offensive? Many people do. You won’t find Xmas in church songbooks or even on many greeting cards. Xmas is popularly associated with a trend towards materialism, and sometimes the target of people who decry the […]
• WOTYblog
• Dictionary.com’s 2015 Word of the Year: Identity
• ?December 8, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: In the News, Language ?207 Comments
• In 2015, Dictionary.com saw a number of themes emerge in the words that gained enough traction to be added to the dictionary along with words that trended in user lookups. The most prominent theme across both of these areas was in the expanding and increasingly fluid nature of conversations about gender and sexuality. Additionally, the […]
• turkey
• The Mistake That Gave Turkey (the Bird) the Same Name as Turkey (the Nation)
• ?November 24, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Calendar Events, etymology, Nature ?353 Comments
• The former center of the Ottoman Empire isn’t exactly a breeding ground for the bird that Americans associate with Thanksgiving. In fact, the turkey is native to North America, so why do they share the same name? First, let’s get the facts on the two turkeys. The word turkey has been used to refer to “land occupied […]
• Does anything rhyme with “orange”?
• ?October 27, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?126 Comments
• The rumor that orange rhymes with no other word is incorrect. Orange rhymes with Blorenge (a mountain in Wales) and sporange (a sac where spores are made). Silver has the same rumor going for it, but it actually rhymes with Wilver (a nickname) and chilver (a ewe lamb).
• definition_big
• How To Get a Word into the Dictionary
• ?October 14, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language, Word Stories ?1,109 Comments
• “I coined a new word. How do I get it into the dictionary?” This is, by far, the question lexicographers hear the most. People invent new words all the time, but which ones actually make it?
• What is the difference between warranty and guarantee?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?24 Comments
• A warranty is a promise or guarantee given. A warranty is usually a written guarantee for a product and declares the maker’s responsibility to repair or replace a defective product or its parts. A guarantee is an agreement assuming responsibility to perform, execute, or complete something and offering security for that agreement.
• What is the difference between there and their? Your and you’re?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?1 Comment
• Their and your are possessive forms used as modifiers before nouns.
• What is the rule for determining whether to use a or an?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?1 Comment
• The rule is: Use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound, however the word is spelled.
• What is the difference between might and may?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• May expresses likelihood while might expresses a stronger sense of doubt or a contrary-to-fact hypothetical. T
• What are Informal, Nonstandard, and Slang Words?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• The status or stylistic labels informal and nonformal as well as colloquial are terms applied to written usage at the lowest level on the scale of formality.
• What is it called when you cannot recall a word?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• Most call it the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome (or phenomenon).
• What is the difference between partly and partially?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• Generally, the words may be used interchangeably to refer to some amount or degree that is less than the whole.
• How should I cite a word or a word and its definition?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• There are different ways to do this according to different manuals of style.
• What is the difference between archaic and obsolete words?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• The meaning of these temporal labels can be somewhat different among dictionaries and thesauri. The label archaic is used for words that were once common but are now rare.
• What is the difference between aluminum and aluminium?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?11 Comments
• Aluminum is the American spelling and aluminium is the British spelling for this ductile, malleable silver-white metal.
• Is there such a thing as a true synonym?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?13 Comments
• Thesauruses present a catalog of synonyms from which we may pick and choose words to put into our writing, but a thesaurus used alone is a very bad thing because there is no such thing as a true synonym. Every word has its particular place in the language.
• Does bimonthly mean twice a month or every two months?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?12 Comments
• The prefix bi- usually means ‘every two’, so bimonthly means ‘every two months’.Semi- means ‘half’ or ‘halfway’, so semimonthly means ‘every two weeks’. However, bimonthly can also mean ‘twice a month’ - but it is rarely used that way. It is best to remember that bi- is “every two” and semi- is “halfway.”
• What Percentage of English Words are Derived from Latin?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?4 Comments
• About 80 percent of the entries in any English dictionary are borrowed, mainly from Latin. Over 60 percent of all English words have Greek or Latin roots.
• Comparatives vs. Superlatives
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• The positive form of an adjective or adverb is the basic form listed in a dictionary, e.g.” “red,” “awful” (adjectives); “soon,” “quickly” (adverbs). Adjectives and adverbs can show degrees of quality or amount with the endings -er and -est or with the words more and most or less and least.
• Should I say try and or try to? How about would have or would of?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?3 Comments
• Replace try and (I will try and fix it) with try to (I will try to fix it). Some grammarians label try and as incorrect when really it is just very informal and best used in conversation.
• Where does the phrase cut the mustard come from?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?4 Comments
• As with many slang and idiomatic phrases, the origin can be a bit unclear.
• How can I figure out when to use some time, sometime, or sometimes?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?2 Comments
• Most often, sometime is one word: He will wash the car sometime.When some is used adjectivally with time to mean a short time, a long time, or an indefinite time, then it should be written as two words: She has not heard from her friend in some time.
• What is MLA style?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• MLA style is the style recommended by the Modern Language Association for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers. It concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and documentation of sources.
• Are there any words that use w as a vowel?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?3 Comments
• “Cwm” (a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain, sometimes containing a lake; a cirque) and “crwth” (an ancient Celtic musical instrument), both from the Welsh, use w as a vowel - standing for the same sound that oo stands for in boom and booth. “Crwth” is also spelled “crowd.”
• What is the difference between a philharmonic and a symphony?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• A philharmonic is a symphony orchestra or the group that supports it. A symphony is a large orchestra. An orchestra is a large group of musicians who play together on various instruments, usually including strings, woodwinds, brass instruments, and percussion instruments.
• Should I use a singular or plural verb with none?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?1 Comment
• None means ‘not one’ or ‘not any’ and it may take either a singular or plural verb.
• What are the 100 most commonly used words in English?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?15 Comments
• These are the most common words in English, ranked in frequency order. The first 100 are said to make up about half of all written material.
• What is the difference between a bug and an insect?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?3 Comments
• We tend to use the word bug loosely for any very small creature with legs.
• Basic Spelling Rules Explained
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?2 Comments
• You can teach yourself to be a better speller. It is important to realize that learning to spell is a process that is never complete. Spelling is something that everyone has to pay attention to and keep working at it.
• The Eight Parts of Speech in English
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?1 Comment
• There are eight major parts of speech.
• What is the difference between the meteorological terms snow flurries and snow showers?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• Snow refers to the partially frozen water vapor which falls in flakes.
• Should I use a singular or a plural verb with a collective noun?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?8 Comments
• A collective noun refers to a whole group as a single entity but also to the members of that group.
• What is the difference between attorney, barrister, lawyer, and solicitor? How about advocate, counsel, counselor, or counselor-at-law?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?10 Comments
• Lawyer is a general term for a person who gives legal device and aid and who conducts suits in court.
• Which is right: I wish it were… or I wish it was…?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?1 Comment
• There is often confusion about were (a past subjunctive) and was (a past indicative) after wish.
• What are context clues?
• ?October 7, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?4 Comments
• Context clues are hints that an author gives to help define a difficult or unusual word. The clue may appear within the same sentence as the word to which it refers, or it may follow in a preceding sentence. Because most of one’s vocabulary is gained through reading, it is important that you be able to […]
• When do you capitalize words like “mother,” “father,” “grandmother,” and “grandfather” when writing about them?
• ?October 5, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?No Comment
• You should capitalize these when referring to your own relatives: Hello, Mother. A good rule to follow is to capitalize them if they are used as proper nouns.
• What is phonetic spelling?
• ?October 5, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?8 Comments
• Phonetic spelling is the representation of vocal sounds which express pronunciations of words. It is a system of spelling in which each letter represents invariably the same spoken sound. Some schools may use phonetic pronunciations to help children learn the spelling of difficult words, for instance, WEDNESDAY = Wed Nes Day.
• Are there any English words that have no vowels?
• ?October 5, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?61 Comments
• The answer to this depends what you mean by “vowel” and “word.” There are two things we mean by the word “vowel”: a speech sound made with the vocal tract open or a letter of the alphabet standing for a spoken vowel.
• What’s the difference between average, mean, median, and mode?
• ?October 5, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?11 Comments
• The terms average, mean, median and mode are commonly confused with each other because they all describe ways to talk about sets of numbers. To look at how each term works, let’s say that nine students took a quiz, and the scores were 91, 84, 56, 90, 70, 65, 90, 92, and 30. When someone asks for the average of a group of […]
• 2014-08A261
• The Truth About Vocal Fry
• ?August 26, 2015 ?by: Kelly Rafey ?in: Language, Science ?34 Comments
• Perhaps you’ve heard of vocal fry, a quality of speech often associated with the likes of Kim Kardashian or Katy Perry. American media stories detailing vocal fry sometimes warn us that it’s damaging to our vocal cords, and that women who use vocal fry are jeopardizing their job prospects. As wonderful as it is that […]
• pimgpsh_fullsize_distr
• What Is It Called When You Misinterpret Lyrics?
• ?August 14, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Language ?1,341 Comments
• Have you ever heard someone sing the wrong lyrics to a song? Maybe a child gave the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” a new meaning by replacing the line “life is but a dream” with “life’s a butter dream,” or an adult belted out “Hold me closer, Tony Danza” instead of “Hold me […]
• clown, vintage, train car
• Why are we calling the GOP presidential slate a “clown car”?
• ?August 6, 2015 ?by: Ammon Shea ?in: In the News, Language ?18 Comments
• The humble clown car has been having a resurgence of late. Not the actual vehicle (the overstuffed car which spills out a seemingly improbable number of red-nosed and bewigged jesters), but the phrase. The reason for this has much to do with the crowded slate of candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination; there are […]
• inflammable
• Why Do Flammable and Inflammable Mean the Same Thing?
• ?August 2, 2015 ?by: Ammon Shea ?in: Language ?185 Comments
• English is a trickster of a language, evidenced by the fact that two words that appear to be antonyms can actually mean the exact same thing. For the most part we manage to bumble along without confusing the two, and can figure out which meaning is intended based on context (although in the case of […]
• movie camera illustration
• Why Is It Called a Blockbuster?
• ?July 11, 2015 ?by: Ammon Shea ?in: Language ?5 Comments
• Summer is upon us, and we are increasingly being treated to all the usual signs of its arrival: itchy and hot weather, dripping ice cream cones, and superheroes vanquishing villains in the latest comic book revival. The last of these things are often referred to as blockbusters; why do we call them that?
• wedding rings
• The Future of the Word “Partner”
• ?July 7, 2015 ?by: Gretchen McCulloch ?in: In the News, Language ?5 Comments
• With the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage, what happens to the word partner?
• DogDays
• What’s the Origin of the Dog Days?
• ?July 6, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, space ?23 Comments
• It’s hot again, up in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s that time of year when the sun shines its most unforgiving beams, baking the ground and, indeed, us. It’s the portion of summer known as the hottest time of the year. Or, more delightfully, the dog days.
• star-spangled banner 2
• The Forgotten Verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
• ?July 3, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Current Events, History, Language ?120 Comments
• Do you know all the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner”? Many people have difficulty memorizing the lyrics of the first verse of this song, which is commonly performed at sports events and other public gatherings. But did you know that there are three additional verses that we almost never hear? In 1814, the poet and […]
• letters, man, blond, speaking
• Can an Inhaled Word Mean Something?
• ?June 25, 2015 ?by: Gretchen McCulloch ?in: Language ?3 Comments
• A surprising number of languages say yes—sometimes If there’s one thing you thought you knew about talking, it’s that speech is produced by pushing air out of the lungs, not by breathing in. But is that always true? This video shows a particular sound that means “yes” in Swedish, and it’s produced while inhaling:
• soccer, field, ball
• Why Is It Called Soccer?
• ?June 22, 2015 ?by: Ammon Shea ?in: Current Events, Language ?40 Comments
• The most popular sport in the world is one in which people chase after a ball and kick it with their feet (and give it an occasional head-butt). In most places where this sport is enjoyed it is referred to in a straightforward fashion: football.
• spelling bee
• What Does the “Bee” in “Spelling Bee” Mean Exactly?
• ?May 26, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: Current Events, etymology, Language ?202 Comments
• As spellers from across the country and around the globe gather to take part in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, let’s try to settle a basic question: Where does the bee in “spelling bee” come from?
• darkweb
• The Deep Web vs. The Dark Web
• ?May 6, 2015 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: In the News, Language ?36 Comments
• Dictionary.com’s latest update contains many terms ushered into existence because of technological advancements. Two of these new entries, deep web and dark web, are so technical in nature that we came across a lot of confusion as to what they actually mean in our research. More tech-savvy publications generally have a disclaimer when discussing the […]
• new words
• New Words Added to Dictionary.com
• ?May 6, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com ?in: In the News, Language ?100 Comments
• In our latest update to the dictionary, we added more than a thousand new and modified definitions including gaming words like esports, permadeath and completionist, terms to prepare you for the 2016 elections like slacktivism, and gender-related terms agender, bigender, and gender-fluid.
• Screen Shot 2015-05-01 at 3.46.44 PM
• What Does “Mom” Mean in Internet Slang?
• ?May 5, 2015 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: In the News, Language ?27 Comments
• Last November while Kim Kardashian was busy “breaking the Internet” with her controversial photoshoot for Paper, New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde was teaching the world—or at least her Twitter and Tumbr followers—about a new slang use of the word mom. These three little letters tweeted out by Lorde in response to Kardashian’s cover photo caused such […]
• democrats, republicans, elephant, donkey
• Democrats vs. Republicans: Which Came First?
• ?April 2, 2015 ?by: Ammon Shea ?in: hidden meaning, History ?51 Comments
• Since Democrats and Republicans appear to have an inexhaustible appetite for enjoying political friction, it seems worth offering some insight on which label came first, in the hopes that each group can use it to browbeat the other. The short answer is that republican came first, but as with so many political issues, that does […]
• Why Is the Biggest Football Game of the Year Called a Bowl?
• January 30, 2015 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?29 Comments
• It’s hard to miss that pinnacle of American football, the Super Bowl. You’ve likely seen or heard the phrase so many times that the words themselves go unnoticed. But let’s take a fresh look: what exactly does the bowl in Super Bowl refer to? The word bowl is over a thousand years old. It entered English with the meaning […]
• Can a Hashtag Be a Word?
• ?January 27, 2015 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, Language ?24 Comments
• #jesuischarlie, #RupertsFault, and #SOTUBURN: 2015 has already produced hashtags that have sparked national and international conversations. But are hashtags really words? At the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society in early January, linguists and word enthusiasts vote on the Word of the Year. This year, the overall winner of this vote was the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. #Blacklivesmatter […]
• letter c, handwriting
• The Curious Chronicle of the Letter C
• January 14, 2015 by: Dictionary.com blog in: alphabet No Comment
• The English language is infamously difficult in part because its spelling befuddles even native speakers as letters take on different sounds depending on what letters surround it. Few letters exemplify this trouble more than the third letter of the English alphabet: C. Think about these words: cease, coin, chic, indict, and discrepancy.
• bae
• That’s So Bae: Beyond the Noun Uses of Bae
• January 8, 2015 by: Jane Solomon in: Grammar, Language 2 Comments
• Over the last couple of years, the term bae has achieved widespread usage. While the noun form has been around for over 10 years, adjectival and verbal uses, along with other related forms, have more recently started popping up to describe the people and things we love, or at least like-like. Twitter, in particular, is rife […]
• i ,chalkboard
• Word Fact: What’s the Name for the Dot Over the i and j?
• January 5, 2015 by: Dictionary.com blog in: alphabet, Word Facts 89 Comments
• While many languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, add specific accents to the letters or characters throughout their alphabet, the English alphabet has only two letters that include a diacritic dot. This mark is added to a letter to signal a change in either the sound or meaning of a character. What is the additional […]
• Boxing Day, boxes
• Does Boxing Day Have Anything to Do with Boxing?
• December 26, 2014 by: Dictionary.com blog in: Current Events, etymology 46 Comments
• In the US, the word boxing usually refers to two athletes stepping into a padded ring, each having the intention of knocking the other off his feet. Also in the US, the holiday known as Boxing Day is generally obscure. In Britain, the celebration is ubiquitous. Let’s spend a minute with the origin of the box in […]
• gift, present, Christmas
• Do You Give Presents or Gifts?
• December 15, 2014 by: Dictionary.com blog in: Grammar, Language 115 Comments
• Where do the words gift and present come from? Why does English use both? It’s not just so that children can ask for toys in multiple ways. Language is not a linear, predestined development.
• tech_touchscreen
• Vocabulary Unplugged: Technology and the Lexicon
• December 11, 2014 by: Jane Solomon in: computers, Language 5 Comments
• Even the least tech-savvy lexicographer understands that technology is a robust source of new words. As technologies move from the realm of science fiction into our everyday realities, new words and meanings spring up around them. While it is expected that names for these new technologies and the words describing our interaction with them are […]
• WOTY blog
• Why Exposure Is Our 2014 Word of the Year
• November 19, 2014 by: Dictionary.com blog in: Current Events, In the News, Language 108 Comments
• In 2014, the Ebola virus, widespread theft of personal information, and shocking acts of violence and brutality dominated the news. Vulnerability and visibility were at the core of the year’s most notable headlines. Encapsulating those themes, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2014 is exposure. The word exposure entered English in the early 1600s to […]
• letter b, cursive
• A Short History of the Letter B
• November 10, 2014 by: Dictionary.com blog in: alphabet 45 Comments
• The letter B was part of the Phoenician alphabet more than 3000 years ago in 1000 BCE. At that time, the letter was called beth and looked a little different, but it made the sound of b and was second in the alphabet.
• hand-drawn letter A
• What Animal Inspired the Letter A?
• ?October 31, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, etymology, Language ?326 Comments
• There is quite a bit of mystery surrounding the letter A. From its prestigious first place position to its interesting shape, tracing the first letter of the English alphabet uncovers a history that begins with, of all things, an ox. The letter A is derived from the Phoenician letter Aleph—a western Semitic word referring to
• trick or treat
• Why Do We Say “Trick or Treat”?
• ?October 29, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, hidden meaning ?66 Comments
• It’s one of a kid’s favorite parts of Halloween. There’s no feeling quite like waiting for a stranger to open his or her door so you can scream the words “Trick or treat!” But why do we say it? What does it actually mean? The practice of donning a costume and asking for treats from your neighbors dates back […]
• halloween-big
• What’s the Difference Between Ghouls, Goblins, and Ghosts?
• ?October 28, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, hidden meaning ?108 Comments
• Come Halloween, miniature ghosts, ghouls, and goblins ring your doorbell. But each of the three freaky frights has a different history and personality.
• chalkboard, i and me
• Word Fact: Should You Say “Between You and I” or “Between You and Me”?
• ?September 22, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language, Word Facts ?288 Comments
• Grammar is a combination of rules and conventions. What is the difference? Well, there are the rules, like a verb must agree with its subject. By that rule, “he say” is incorrect. Then there are conventions, which are uses of language that are common enough that even though they break the “rules” they become “correct” […]
• september
• If September Means “Seven” Why is it the Ninth Month?
• ?September 1, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, hidden meaning, History ?317 Comments
• We take the predictability of the calendar for granted. But we may have felt differently if we were living under the rule of Julius Caesar. September was the seventh month of the old Roman calendar. In this calendar, the year began in March. But the Julian calendar reform shifted the start of new year back two months to […]
• Humpty Dumpty
• Hidden Histories of 3 Popular Nursery Rhymes
• ?August 29, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, hidden meaning ?34 Comments
• Though written for children, nursery rhymes often conceal references to historical events. Here are the hidden stories behind three popular nursery rhymes. Humpty Dumpty This classic nursery rhyme is also a history lesson in the English Civil War.
• college slang cheat sheet
• Head of the Class: A College Slang Cheat Sheet
• ?August 25, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, Language ?5 Comments
• To help kick off the new academic year, we asked college students who use Dictionary.com to share slang they’ve heard around campus. We received more than 2200 responses in only a few days. Notable themes we noticed include the supernatural, food, and making out. We’ve highlighted our favorite responses below. Are you familiar with the […]
• TV
• Origin Story: Why Do We Call Them “Emmys”?
• ?August 22, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?19 Comments
• Many viewers know the names and faces of the actors and actresses that walk the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, but few are familiar with the story behind the true star of the show: Emmy. Where does this popular awards show get its name? The word Emmy refers to the statuette that’s handed out […]
• claires-kitchen
• A Rogue Coinage: Manic Pixie Dream Girl
• ?August 6, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, In the News, Language ?3 Comments
• In 2007 film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl in an attempt to classify Kirsten Dunst’s role in Elizabethtown. He first described this stock romantic character as a woman who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite […]
• august, chalkboard
• Which Overachiever is August Named For?
• ?August 1, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology ?90 Comments
• August has arrived. If you’re in Europe, it’s likely you’re taking an extended holiday. If you’re anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, you might just be trying to stay cool. August is the eighth month of the Gregorian calendar, and the sixth month of the Roman calendar. Its original name was Sextilus, Latin for “sixth month.” In […]
• cliche
• A New Hope for Tired Clichés
• ?July 22, 2014 ?by: Orin Hargraves ?in: Language ?9 Comments
• Dictionaries vary in particulars about the definition of cliché, but they all agree that a cliché is not a good thing; you will not find a definition that assesses clichés appreciatively, and chances are that when you use the word, it is either to lament that you do not have at hand a better expression, […]
• star-spangled banner 2
• The Forgotten Verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
• ?July 3, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, History, Language ?104 Comments
• In 1814, the poet and lyricist Francis Scott Key penned the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” originally known as “Defense of Fort M’Henry.” During the War of 1812, Key witnessed the attacks on Baltimore and wrote the words based on his experiences this night. These lyrics were printed in local newspapers and set to the tune […]
• this
• This, It, and the Power of Pronouns
• ?July 1, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Grammar, Language ?12 Comments
• Earlier this year, bloggers at Gawker left behind internet slang for a formal style more in line with the New York Times than gossip blogs. As Gawker attempts to redefine itself as a publishing authority, its new editorial guidelines have adapted to explicitly forbid the language that Gawker’s readers recognize as an identifying component of […]
• Julius Caesar
• How the Month of July Got Its Name
• ?July 1, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, hidden meaning ?62 Comments
• July, unlike June, is named for a mortal, albeit one who devised and ruled an empire. Julius Caesar was a Roman general, statesman, and historian who conquered Gaul (what is now part of Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), changed the structure of the Roman government into a dictatorship, was assassinated in legendary fashion, and most importantly for our purposes, helped […]
• banned words
• When Publications Ban Words
• ?June 27, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: computers, In the News, Language ?5 Comments
• In April Gawker editor Max Read sent out a memo to the site’s writers with a list of banned words and practices. On the list, he includes internet slang such as “epic,” “derp,” “pwn,” “OMG,” and the standalone “this.” Read writes, “We want to sound like regular adult human beings, not Buzzfeed writers or Reddit […]
• futevolei edit
• 6 Portuguese Terms We Wish Existed in English
• ?June 23, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, translation ?55 Comments
• Sometimes we’re at a loss for words, not because we’re speechless, but because no English term lends itself to the situation (or snack) at hand. At those times, we turn to other languages, celebrating them for the concepts we wish we could express so easily in English. Here are some of our favorite words from […]
• guitar square
• Center Stage: 21 Words to Know for Music Festival Season
• ?June 17, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?9 Comments
• 1. Bonnaroo This festival name may bring to mind a bonanza of kangaroos, but bonnaroo is actually a Creole slang word that means “best on the street.” The inspiration for this festival name was the 1974 album Desitively Bonnaroo by jazz legend and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dr. John. Desitive is an obscure […]
• The Seven Sisters Pose for Spitzer Ð and for You!
• Where Does the Book Title “The Fault in Our Stars” Come From?
• ?June 13, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: reading ?32 Comments
• As more and more fans discover John Green’s best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars thanks to the recent film adaptation starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, questions arise about this moving story: Is the book within the book, titled An Imperial Affliction, real? No. What happens to Hazel, the 16-year-old narrator, after the ending […]
• book, grass
• Summer Reading Shortlist
• ?June 4, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, reading ?129 Comments
• Summertime brings summer reading, both the required kind and the just-for-fun variety. Whether you’re reading books in preparation for the slew of movie adaptations hitting theaters this summer (like The Fault in Our Stars, The Giver, or Gone Girl), brushing up on the latest installment of your favorite series, or indulging in a few long-awaited […]
• june, letterpress
• Why Is the Sixth Month Called June?
• ?June 2, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?100 Comments
• For students and teachers alike, June is often their favorite month. School’s out and the days are long. But where did the first month of summer get its name? In Old English, this month was often referred to as simply “midsummer month.” It also may have been called “sere-month,” meaning “dry and withered,” though this […]
• spelling bee
• What Does the “Bee” in “Spelling Bee” Mean Exactly?
• ?May 28, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, Language ?142 Comments
• As spellers from across the country and around the globe gather to take part in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, let’s try to settle a basic question: Where does the bee in “spelling bee” come from?
• baby, name tag
• The Most Popular Baby Names of 2013
• ?May 21, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, naming ?52 Comments
• The Social Security Administration recently released the most popular baby names of 2013, reminding Americans that even something as intimate as what you name your child is influenced by our shared cultural zeitgeist. Rather than just look at last year’s data, we decided to chart how the top five names have shifted in popularity since […]
• high school lockers
• What Does “Sophomore” Mean? Can It Be an Insult?
• ?May 15, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology ?38 Comments
• Of the four tiers of high school, sophomore is the year that stands out as strange. Freshman, junior, and senior are relatively clear monikers for their associated levels, and it’s funny that in school, the place where you are most expected to know the how and why of everything, second-year students are called by a […]
• may, metal type, vintage letters
• How Did the Month of May Get Its Name?
• ?May 1, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?176 Comments
• If you frequent our posts, you may detect a common theme: behind the everyday nature of common words, surprising meaning and history often lurk. Case in point: this very month of May. The fifth month of the Gregorian calendar, May, is named after a goddess named Maia. But which goddess named Maia?
• caterpillar
• Cankers, Caterpillars, and Malt-worms: 3 Shakespearean Insults
• ?April 25, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, History ?15 Comments
• Great insults pepper the comedies and tragedies of William Shakespeare. (Though the Bard of Avon is known for his terms of endearments as well.) From A Midsummer Night’s Dream to King Henry IV, here are a few of our favorites. You canker blossom! This flowery barb is delivered by the newly lovelorn Hermia in A […]
• caterpillar
• Cankers, Caterpillars, and Malt-worms: 3 Shakespearean Insults
• April 25, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, History ?No Comment
• Great insults pepper the comedies and tragedies of William Shakespeare. (Though the Bard of Avon is known for his terms of endearments as well.) From A Midsummer Night’s Dream to King Henry IV, here are a few of our favorites. You canker blossom! This flowery barb is delivered by the newly lovelorn Hermia in A […]
• William Shakespeare, neolgoism
• Shakespeare’s Novel Neologisms We Still Use
• April 23, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology, History, Language, reading ?133 Comments
• In honor of William Shakespeare, we’d like to share some words popularized by the Bard himself. Shakespeare died on April 23rd and was baptized on April 26th; his actual birth date remains unknown.We hesitate to definitively say that Shakespeare coined the following terms. While that may be the case, it’s hard to know for sure […]
• tuesday, wood block
• Tuesday Is Named for a One-handed God Named Tiw. Who Is He?
• April 22, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, naming ?165 Comments
• Yes, it’s true. Tiw’s remarkable myth involves women with beards (more on that in a bit.) Regardless, the past 1,000 years or so have not been kind to this Northern European divinity. To make a long story short, it seems that Tiw used to be a big shot, up there with Odin and Thor in Norse mythology. […]
• easter egg, turquoise
• The Other Easter Eggs: Coded Messages and Hidden Treats
• April 17, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning, History ?1 Comment
• The term Easter egg started popping up in the 16th and 17th centuries. Its original meaning refers to a hollowed-out or hard-boiled egg, dyed or painted for decoration. It can also refer to an egg-shaped item, such as a receptacle or chocolate, given as an Easter-time gift. In the 1980s, however, the term Easter egg […]
• Easter Island
• Why is Easter Island named “Easter”?
• April 17, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, translation ?14 Comments
• The instantly recognizable statues on Easter Island (887 of them), called moai, have perplexed and fascinated explorers, experts and average folks since the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen came across it in 1722. And Mr. Roggeveen is the reason it’s called Easter Island. He and his crew dropped anchor on Easter Sunday. The current inhabitants of Isla de […]
• april
• Why Is April Called “April”? The Answer Is a Mystery!
• March 31, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?289 Comments
• Mark Twain once wrote: “This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.” Twain is referring to the first day of April or, as it has come to be known as, April Fool’s Day. While the first day of the fourth month of the […]
• basketball
• Bunnies or Basketballs: A March Madness Exploration
• March 27, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?7 Comments
• A few years ago, Brendan Koerner over at Slate chronicled the evolution of the name of the annual college basketball tournament March Madness. He reminds us that there was actually a civil lawsuit about whether the college teams could use the term, which had been used by a high-school tournament in Illinois. The expression has […]
• Woden, Odin
• Wednesday’s Named for Two Very Different Gods
• March 19, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?129 Comments
• The name Wednesday derives from two mighty but distinct gods. The Old English word for Wednesday indicates that the day was named for the Germanic god Woden. In Romance languages, the name is derived from the Roman god Mercury. (For example, Wednesday is mercredi in French and
• pi, mathematical symbol
• Why Is Today Pi Day? What Is Pi Short For?
• March 13, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, etymology ?96 Comments
• Today is 3/14, otherwise known as Pi Day - the holiday commemorating the mathematical constant p (pi). Since mathematic notation is a language that uses symbols from a multitude of alphabets and typefaces, it seems only fitting that this sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet get a little attention. The Latin name of the Greek […]
• chair
• Musical Chairs: What Janet Yellen’s New Title Really Means
• ?March 12, 2014 ?by: Rebekah Otto ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, In the News, Language ?1 Comment
• When Janet Yellen was confirmed as leader of the Federal Reserve Board, she changed the title of her position from chairman to chair. Though this shocked the media, who were both elated and censorious, the term chair has been used in this sense for a very long time.
• Hand with calender.
• Is There a Connection Between March the Month and “Marching”?
• ?March 3, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, etymology ?60 Comments
• The name March is derived from the Roman Martius named after Mars, the Roman god of war. In ancient Rome, March 1st marked the first day of spring, which coincided with the beginning of the calendar year and the start of the military campaign season—which may explain why soldiers “march into battle.”
• silver screen, old theater
• Why Do We Call It the Silver Screen? A Look at 3 Old Hollywood Terms
• ?February 28, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: etymology, In the News ?20 Comments
• Since its introduction in the early 20th century, the film industry’s contributions to the English language have been manifold. Some terms, along with the concepts they described, were fleeting. Take Smell-O-Vision, the olfactory movie-going experience in which plot-related scents were pumped into the theater during screenings; it made its debut and last appearance in the same [...]
• minecraft
• Get in the Game: 10 Gaming Terms Decoded
• ?February 21, 2014 ?by: Lauren Sliter ?in: Language ?44 Comments
• Gaming terms can be as foreign to non-gamers as technical jargon and quantum mechanics, but a closer look at the gamer’s glossary reveals many of the words to be intuitive extensions of words and concepts familiar to the non-gamer. Here are some gaming terms defined and explained for the gamer in all of us. Roguelike [...]
• House of Cards
• What’s a Whip? House of Cards Lexicon
• ?February 14, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: hidden meaning, In the News ?No Comment
• As Netflix releases the much-anticipated second season of House of Cards, viewers brace themselves for some serious binge-watching. In the show, main character Frank Underwood’s job title is House Majority Whip, and in the British 1990s version of House of Cards, the corresponding character is a Chief Whip. Do these titles have anything to do [...]
• trending, graph, chalkboard
• Soaring Searches: January’s Trending Lookups
• ?February 11, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?12 Comments
• Dictionary lookups often reflect the themes, topics and trends that are dominating the news headlines at any given time. In January 2014, lookups for obscure foods, popular films and tricky government terms ballooned. Here are a few of the most interesting searches that spiked.
• Gold medal
• Go for the Gold: The Strange History of Olympic Medals
• ?February 3, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, History, Language ?18 Comments
• At the first Olympic Games back in 776 BCE, competitors did not receive medals. Instead the top athletes were crowned with wreaths made of olive leaves. This tradition continued until Roman emperor Theodosius I (or perhaps his son) abolished the Olympics around the year 400 CE. The revival of the Olympics dates from the late [...]
• February
• The Odd Original Name of February
• ?February 1, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?177 Comments
• Though February is the shortest month of the year, it often feels like the longest in cold, snowy climates. Why does the month have only 28 days? First here’s a little history of our calendar. The original Roman calendar only had ten months, because the winter was not demarcated. In the 700s BC, the second [...]
• grammys
• Lyrics & Lexicon: Grammys 2014
• ?January 24, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?2 Comments
• Today—in honor of the Grammys—we explore the literary legacies, word origins, and surprising factoids behind some of the expressions and terms in the lyrics that had many of us singing along in 2013.
• string telephone, listening
• We’re Listening. What Words Do You Think We Should Add to Dictionary.com?
• ?January 24, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?314 Comments
• Earlier this week, we announced that we’d added hundreds of new words to the dictionary, including Google Glass, Obamacare, and many others. But we’ve been wondering: what additional terms do you think we should add to Dictionary.com?
• handwriting
• Take Time to Celebrate a Dying Art: Handwriting
• ?January 23, 2014 ?by: M. Carnetnoir ?in: Current Events, reading ?12 Comments
• January 23 marks an obscure holiday that Dictionary.com, despite being a website, fully endorses: National Handwriting Day. Handwriting Day is not just a holiday dedicated to penmanship. Today is about you, and what makes you you. Your handwriting is unique and it is personal. It is as important and distinctive as your fingerprints.
• graphology, handwriting, penmanship
• Does Your Handwriting Really Say Something About Your Personality?
• ?January 23, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, hidden meaning, Language ?184 Comments
• Graphologists, or self-proclaimed handwriting experts, claim that it does. Specifically they claim that individuals who share certain personality traits write in a similar fashion, so graphologists analyze handwriting to deduce the character traits of the writer. In the early 1900s, Milton Newman Bunker invented the most common graphology technique called graphoanalysis. (Other methods of graphology [...]
• bro
• Are You a Bro?: Brocab 101
• ?January 22, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: In the News, Language ?75 Comments
• Think back on this: 2007 was a big year for the bro. The famous phrase “Don’t tase me, bro!” catapulted into meme-status, and The Onion published a pristine piece called “Bro, You’re A God Among Bros” which parodied the tendency of bros (or brahs, if you prefer) to create portmanbros like Bromo sapien and brofessional. [...]
• because
• Because X: The New Use of an Old Word
• ?January 9, 2014 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: In the News, Language ?85 Comments
• On January 3, approximately 200 linguists at the American Dialect Society conference gathered to vote on what their 2013 Word of the Year should be. While creative coinages sharknado, doge, bitcoin, selfie, Obamacare, and twerk all received nominations, it was an old word used in new ways that most excited linguistics this year: because.
• Janus
• Which Two-headed God Is January Named After?
• ?January 2, 2014 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, etymology, hidden meaning ?180 Comments
• January is often considered the month for deep reflection. We look back at the year behind us, bemoaning our regrets and celebrating our successes. And then, we look forward to the future year. We make well-meaning resolutions and hope for the best. So, in this way, we’re all a little bit like Janus, the Roman [...]
• Boxing Day, boxes
• Does Boxing Day Have Anything To Do with Boxing?
• ?December 26, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?29 Comments
• In the U.S., the word boxing usually refers to two athletes stepping into a padded ring, each having the intention of knocking the other off his feet. Also in the U.S., the holiday known as Boxing Day is generally obscure. In Britain, the celebration is ubiquitous. Let’s spend a minute with the origin of the “box” in [...]
• yule_big
• What Does Yule Really Mean?
• ?December 23, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?23 Comments
• The lyric from “Deck the Halls” goes “Troll the ancient yuletide carol.” Amidst all the fa-la-la-ing, did you ever ask yourself exactly what yuletide is? Yule is the ancient name in the Germanic lunar calendar for a winter festival corresponding to December and January. Later, yule referred
• misspelling
• Misspelling of the Year 2013
• ?December 19, 2013 ?by: Tyler Schnoebelen ?in: Current Events, Language ?136 Comments
• To explore the psyche of a people, do not look at what they do-look at what they do wrong. Today, we introduce the Misspelling of the Year. A word that was looked up significantly more this year than the year before. A word with lots of different misspellings. A word in the news. The word: [...]
• Jane Austen
• Jane Austen’s Neologistic Contributions to English
• ?December 15, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: reading ?15 Comments
• In honor of Jane Austen’s birthday on December 16, we’d like to highlight some entertaining words that appear in her books and letters. For the following terms, Jane Austen has the distinction of being the first citation in the OED; this doesn’t necessarily give Austen coinage credit, though it does mean that she was an [...]
• driving while texting
• The Dictionary Just Got a Little Bigger
• ?December 15, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?22 Comments
• 2013 was an exciting year for the English vocabulary. Some long-simmering terms like twerk bounced into the spotlight, while new coinages (from the trendy cronut and selfie to the serious Obamacare) cemented their place in the English language. As the English language grows and evolves, so must our dictionary. Here are just a few words [...]
• hobbit, Tolkien
• Where Does the Word Hobbit Come From?
• ?December 13, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, reading ?215 Comments
• J.R.R. Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892. In honor of the author’s beloved Lord of the Rings series of books, we pay tribute to his fantastic creation, the hobbit. Hobbits are similar to humans, but they are short and have hairy feet. Bilbo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, and Frodo Baggins are the most-well known hobbit examples. In J.R.R. [...]
• gift, present, Christmas
• Do You Give Presents or Gifts?
• ?December 9, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?107 Comments
• This time of year we are all making our lists and checking them twice. All this holiday shopping got us thinking: where do the words gift and present come from? Why does English use both? It’s not just so that children can ask for toys in multiple ways. Language is not a linear, predestined development.
• mansplain
• Word Watch 2013: -splain
• ?December 6, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, Language ?45 Comments
• The term mansplaining received the high honor of being nominated as one of the “most creative” new words at the American Dialect Society 2012 Word of the Year vote. In addition to being creative, this term, particularly the -splaining part, has proven to be incredibly robust and useful as a combining form in 2013, and [...]
• twerk, bear, dancing
• Word Watch 2013: Twerk
• ?December 4, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, Language ?94 Comments
• This year, the word twerk bounced its way into the universal consciousness of English speakers thanks to the controversial performance of Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards in late August. Only a few days later, Oxford Dictionaries Online announced its quarterly update, listing twerk among the new additions (additions that had been planned [...]
• moon, moonshine, moonstruck, over the moon
• Moonstruck: 9 Terms of the Lunar Lexicon
• ?December 2, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language, space ?23 Comments
• Whether speculating on the havoc it wreaks when it’s full or waxing poetic on the beauty of its glow, people love talking about the moon. This age-old fascination with our celestial satellite has resulted in a lexicon loaded with lunar-themed words, phrases, and meanings.
• hanukkah, chanukah
• How Do You Spell Chanukah?
• ?November 26, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, translation ?118 Comments
• Hanukkah begins this week. So does Chanukah, Hannukah, Hannukkah, and Channukah. Confused? We don’t blame you. Why is this Jewish holiday, also known as the Festival of Lights, spelled in so many ways? The answer comes down to transliteration. Unlike translation,
• turkey
• The Mistake that Gave Turkey (the Bird) the Same Name as Turkey (the Nation)
• ?November 23, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Current Events, etymology, hidden meaning ?216 Comments
• If you’ve ever visited Turkey, you probably ate shwarma, but it’s unlikely that you were served a crispy, golden turkey leg. The former center of the Ottoman Empire isn’t exactly a breeding ground for the bird that Americans associate with Thanksgiving. In fact, the turkey is native to North America. So why do they share the [...]
• yams, sweet potatoes
• Are Yams and Sweet Potatoes the Same Thing?
• ?November 21, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?89 Comments
• The yummy portion of your Thanksgiving dinner that happens to be orange ? is it made of yams or sweet potatoes? Even if you think you used yams, they might be sweet potatoes after all. Yams and sweet potatoes are in fact two different root vegetables. And unless you shop in a specialty store, it’s likely that you’ve [...]
• selfie
• Selfie: A Portrait of a Word
• ?November 14, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: etymology, Language ?71 Comments
• As Word of the Year decisions approach, the lexicography team at Dictionary.com has been reflecting on words that have risen in popularity this year. One such word is selfie. In case you’re unfamiliar with this term, selfie means “a photo that one takes of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam, especially for posting on [...]
• book-big
• By the Book: 7 Literary Tributes in Popular Music
• ?November 9, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming ?117 Comments
• Have you ever felt so inspired by a good book that you wanted to break into song? Many bands and recording artists have acted on that impulse by working elements of their favorite novels, short stories, or poems into their musical repertoires. Here are a few of our favorite salutes to literature in popular music.
• text-big
• Is Text Messaging Ruining English? Absolutely Not.
• ?November 6, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: reading ?40 Comments
• With every generation come cries that teenagers are destroying the language with their newfangled slang. The current grievance harps on the way casual language used in texts and instant messages inhibits kids from understanding how to write and speak “properly.” While amateur language lovers might think this argument makes sense, experts say this is not [...]
• Dracula, Epistolary novel
• 7 Timeless Epistolary Novels
• ?November 2, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: reading ?5 Comments
• The term epistolary, meaning “consisting of letters,” entered English in the 1600s from the Greek term for “message” or “letter.” An epistolary novel is a story told exclusively through fictionalized letters, emails, newspaper articles, and other primary sources. The form experienced a popularity surge in the mid-1700s, and has since structured some of the most [...]
• trick or treat, m&ms, tootsie roll
• What do the Ms in “M&M” stand for? And who is the “tootsie” in a Tootsie Roll?
• ?October 30, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?123 Comments
• Dreading the Halloween stash? You’ve probably begun to wonder what the names on many of those wrappers mean. Here’s the meaning behind the names of a few popular confections. • Forest Mars, Sr. saw soldiers eating hard-shelled chocolates during the Spanish Civil War, inspiring the mass production of
• jack o'lantern, halloween
• Who is the “Jack” in “Jack O’ Lantern?”
• ?October 29, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?158 Comments
• This week thousands of Americans will scoop out the flesh of a gourd, crudely carve a haunting face into its rind, and stick a candle inside. Then the jack-o’-lanterns will proudly be displayed on porches and stoops. Who or what is this wacky tradition named after? The British can claim ownership of the original use [...]
• halloween-big
• What’s the difference between ghouls, goblins, and ghosts? Which one is truly disgusting?
• ?October 27, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, hidden meaning ?67 Comments
• Come Halloween, miniature ghosts, ghouls, and goblins ring your doorbell. But each of the three freaky frights has a different history and personality. Only one of them has alarming tendencies towards necrophagia. One of the only features these staples of the supernatural share is their ghastliness. Ghosts are considered to be the souls of the dead.
• baby-big
• Around the Web: Letters, Dudes and Glitches
• ?October 25, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Around the Web, naming ?4 Comments
• Baby names seem to be perennially interesting, if only because we are all anxious about what our names say about us or how the names of our children will impact their lives.
• definition_big
• How do I get a word into the dictionary?
• ?October 16, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?46 Comments
• “I coined a new word. How do I get it into the dictionary?” This is, by far, the question lexicographers hear the most. People invent new words all the time, but which ones actually make it?
• Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds
• The Past and Future of the Dictionary
• ?October 15, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, Language ?32 Comments
• Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1775, was the first comprehensive dictionary in English. Before this time, dictionaries were often glossaries of difficult words, neglecting more basic terms.
• Columbus, America
• Why is it called America, not Columbusia?
• ?October 13, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, Education, etymology, Language ?267 Comments
• American place names can sound pretty confusing even to native English speakers. From Philadelphia (Greek for “loving brother”) to Chicago (Algonquian Fox for “place of the wild onion”), the map of America is an etymological hodge-podge. For a clear example, take three adjacent states in New England. Vermont is an inverted, rough translation of the French for “green [...]
• sploit_big
• What Does the Exploitation Film Genre Have to do with Watergate? An Exploration of Libfixes
• ?October 9, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?13 Comments
• A few weeks ago, we discussed the -core suffix in relation to the word mumblecore. Today we’re going to take a look at another robust suffix born on the silver screen, -sploitation.
• spylingo_big
• Covert Ops: 9 Espionage Terms Decoded
• ?October 7, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, reading ?4 Comments
• The fabulous gadgets of 007 and Ethan Hunt might be out of our price range, but the vocabularies of super spies are well within reach. Join us as we decode 9 terms from the world of espionage.
• happiness_big
• Lexical Investigations: Happiness
• ?October 1, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Lexical Investigations ?94 Comments
• “The pursuit of Happiness” was thought to be an unalienable right by the writers of the US Declaration of Independence. However, in 1776, the definition of happiness evoked a different meaning than it does today. When the framers of this historic document wrote about “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” what exactly did they mean by [...]
• tv
• Breaking Bad? Word Stories Behind Four Popular TV Shows
• ?September 27, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?35 Comments
• Television has a habit of repurposing and repackaging common sayings into names of shows, from Three’s Company to Orange Is the New Black, and it’s easy to understand why: idioms are packed with rich associations that resonate instantly with viewers, and when applied to titles of the small screen, they quickly communicate the sensibilities of the [...]
• likelike_big
• Like vs. Like-Like: A Look at Reduplication in English
• ?September 26, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Language ?112 Comments
• You can like someone, and then you can LIKE-like someone. These two things, though they both involve liking, have different meanings. The first one could mean that you like a person as a friend or you have a crush on that person, depending on the context. However, the second type of like—the LIKE-like—unambiguously implies that [...]
• flair_big
• Lexical Investigations: Flair
• ?September 24, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Lexical Investigations ?14 Comments
• The word flair has been around in English for a long time—since the mid-14th century—however, the senses that most English speakers are familiar with did not enter English until much later. While the noun form of flair entered English from the Old French word of the same spelling, this term ultimately came from the Late [...]
• mumblecore_blog
• What’s All the Mumble About? An Exploration of Hollywood’s New Favorite Word
• ?September 19, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?19 Comments
• If you’ve tuned into entertainment news lately, a curious word may have caught your ear: mumblecore. It’s surfaced recently surrounding the release of Drinking Buddies, a romantic comedy starring Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson. The term was rumored to have been coined in jest by a sound editor in 2005, but the construct has demonstrated [...]
• friday, 13
• Triskaidekaphobia is “the fear of 13.” Are you aware of why today is considered unlucky, anyhow?
• ?September 12, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language ?88 Comments
• Can you turn to the person next to you, look them in the eye, and honestly say that you have never felt a twinge of concern in the morning when you realize it is Friday the 13th? It’s time for triskaidekaphobes to acknowledge their shared superstition, learn its possible source, and try to gain some insight into [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Frugal
• ?September 10, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Lexical Investigations ?26 Comments
• Frugal is a great word for thrifty people because it glorifies the idea of saving without any of the negative connotations of cheap or miserly. English speakers started using frugal at the turn of the 17th century. While the noun form had already existed in English since the 1530s, the earliest citing of the adjective [...]
• If September means “seven” why is it the ninth month? Also, why is it “lucky seven?”
• ?September 5, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, hidden meaning, History ?260 Comments
• We take the predictability of the calendar for granted. But we may have felt differently if we were living under the rule of Julius Caesar. September was the seventh month of the old Roman calendar. In this calendar, the year began in March. But the Julian calendar reform shifted the start of new year back
• Lexical Investigations: Motley
• ?September 3, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, Lexical Investigations ?14 Comments
• The exact origin of motley is uncertain, but it’s likely to have come from the Middle English word mote, meaning “speck.” It makes sense then that mottled and speckled have similar meanings. Mottle is actually a back formation of motley.
• In Defense of the Figurative Use of Literally
• ?August 30, 2013 ?by: Rebekah Otto ?in: etymology, Grammar, Language ?101 Comments
• Recently the wordsmiths of the United States have availed themselves once again to descry the figurative use of the word literally. This particular spate of analysis finds its origins in a Reddit post titled, “We did it guys, we finally killed English,” which featured an image of Google’s definition for the word. Since that popular post, journalists [...]
• Why do people end sentences with “so”? What effect does it have on conversation?
• ?August 21, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Grammar, Language ?70 Comments
• Welcome to Part II of our discussion on the word so. Last week we explored the sentence-initial so, and today we’ll be looking at ending sentences with so—a phenomenon called “the dangling so.” Despite its widespread usage, this construction seems to irk people even more than the sentence-initial so; there’s even a Facebook group called “I [...]
• Do you use “so” to manage conversations?
• ?August 9, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Grammar, Language ?106 Comments
• Over the last few years, lovers of language have casually observed an increase in speakers beginning sentences with the word so. What are some new ways in which so is being used in colloquial speech, and what cues do these utterances send to listeners?
• Algorithms, books
• How Can Algorithms Help Us Understand Books?
• ?August 2, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: computers, Current Events, History, Language, reading ?17 Comments
• Recently the Sunday Times outed J.K. Rowling as the author of the detective novel The Cuckoo’s Calling, published under her nom de plume Robert Galbraith. While devotees of Rowling quickly procured and binge-read her latest work, linguists and language lovers worldwide celebrated the computational analysis of the two scholars who helped reveal the true author [...]
• What’s in a Name? The Royal Baby’s Possible Monikers
• ?July 18, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, History ?127 Comments
• A novel game of Name That Baby has swept the UK this month as the imminent birth of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first child has Brits flocking to gambling sites, casting their predictions for the royal tot’s name along with its sex, hair color and future profession.
• tv
• Of Hashtags and Hate-watching
• ?July 5, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: etymology, Language ?78 Comments
• 2013 has certainly been a big year for the hashtag. While hashtags were beginning to spread beyond the context of their original Twitter use last year, this year has seen other websites such as Facebook adopt the hashtag as a social-media tool.
• Pluto has two new moons. What are they named?
• ?July 3, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, Science ?20 Comments
• The International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the names for two new moons of Pluto (everyone’s favorite dwarf planet). Like Pluto’s three other moons (Charon, Nix, and Hydra), the two new satellites are named for figures from Greek myth: Styx and Kerberos.
• Do e-readers change the way we read?
• ?June 27, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: computers, Language, reading ?33 Comments
• New words enter English all the time. One major source of new words and senses is technological innovation. If a device is created that didn’t previously exist, it needs a name, and if the device is popular enough, that name, along with other words to describe the functions of the device, enters widespread usage. So [...]
• Wait a minute, is this solstice “Midsummer Eve?” Let us explain . . .
• ?June 19, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Science ?103 Comments
• The Gregorian calendar tells us that the "summer solstice" marks the longest day of the calendar year and the beginning of the summer season in the northern hemisphere. However, literature refers to a point called Midsummer Night. So which, and when, is it? This is a celestial quandary that involves the sun, the earth and…William [...]
• What’s the origin of the word “nice?”
• ?June 17, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: etymology, History, Language ?39 Comments
• Recently the phrase “nice guy” has been used to describe guys who are anything but “nice” by current standards. Before it was taken down, the blog The Nice Guys of OkCupid showcased images from online dating profiles of self-proclaimed “nice guys” overlaid with misogynistic quotes taken directly from the text of these same profiles.
• Dad? Pops? Father? Why so many names for the same person?
• ?June 13, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?261 Comments
• Sunday is called Father’s Day, but many of us refer to our male parents as Dad or Papa rather than by the more formal “father.” Why does English have so many names for the same person? And where do they all come from?
• Hippies and Teddy Boys: Culture-bound Terms
• ?June 6, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: hidden meaning, History, translation ?29 Comments
• When a term is culturally bound, its meaning is so tightly linked to the place and time in which the word arose that it cannot be faithfully translated into another language without first putting the concept of the term into a greater context.
• Why is the sixth month called June?
• ?June 1, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?61 Comments
• For students and teachers alike, June is often their favorite month. School’s out and the days are long. But where did the first month of summer get its name? In Old English, this month was often referred to as simply “midsummer month.” It also may have been called “sere-month,” meaning “dry and withered,” though this [...]
• What does the “bee” in “spelling bee” mean exactly?
• ?May 25, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, Language ?118 Comments
• As spellers from across the country and around the globe gather to take part in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, let’s try to settle a basic question: Where does the “bee” in “spelling bee” come from?
• More Thoughts On the Nonstandard Uses of “Slash”
• ?May 14, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning, Language, Punctuation ?46 Comments
• A couple weeks ago Anne Curzan wrote an article for the Lingua Franca blog about new slang uses of the word slash. This article particularly interested me because I, like her students, have been using the slash in these ways for the last five-plus years. As a linguist slash huge nerd, the first thing I [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Camouflage
• ?May 7, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?41 Comments
• Camouflage Before it was a military term, camouflage was French street-slang popular among pickpockets and other shadowy figures in 1870s Paris. A combination of the Italian word camuffare (to disguise) and the French word camouflet (puff of smoke), this word described a common practice among thieves:
• The Original American Flapper
• ?May 3, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: etymology, History ?28 Comments
• In a 1923 interview Zelda Fitzgerald told a reporter that she loved her husband’s “books and heroines,” especially the heroines who were like her. She explained that she liked girls like Rosalind Connage, a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 novel This Side of Paradise, because she admired “their courage, their recklessness and spendthriftiness.” She [...]
• Who Coined the Term Fashionista?
• ?April 22, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: Current Events, etymology, History, Language ?13 Comments
• In light of a recent article about the birth of the word “fashionista,” we’d like to delve into the -ista suffix in hopes of understanding why English speakers combine it with certain words. But first, let’s look at “fashionista.” This word originally appeared in Stephen Fried’s 1993 biography of supermodel Gia Carangi. He invented it [...]
• William Shakespeare, neolgoism
• Shakespeare’s Novel Neologisms We Still Use
• ?April 19, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology, History, Language, reading ?125 Comments
• In honor of William Shakespeare’s birthday on April 23, we’d like to share some words popularized by the Bard himself. We hesitate to definitively say that Shakespeare coined the following terms. While that may be the case, it’s hard to know for sure that the list below contains terms invented by the beloved playwright.
• Lexical Investigations: Etymology
• ?April 16, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?22 Comments
• Etymology For a word that originates from the Greek term etymon, which literally translates to “true sense,” etymology certainly has a lot of untruth surrounding its existence since it entered English in the late fourteenth century.
• Lexical Investigations: Karma
• ?April 9, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?65 Comments
• Karma Karma entered English as a religious concept in the nineteenth century, but as it gained popularity, it took on additional meanings, that while still spiritual, are not loaded with the same religious connotations as the original sense.
• Lexical Investigations: Aesthetician
• ?April 2, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?27 Comments
• Aesthetician If you’re not sure which spelling is correct, aesthetician or esthetician, you might be surprised that neither is the original. The word aesthetic became commonly known among English speakers in the 1830s, when translators including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and movements such as transcendentalism popularized German philosophy.
• Lexical Investigations: Desiderata
• ?March 19, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?91 Comments
• Desiderata Desiderata is a plural noun, with the singular form desideratum, meaning “things wanted or needed”: “Happily-ever-after” and “eternal love” appear to be the desiderata of the current generation to whom “fat chance” say those of us who are older, wiser and more curmudgeonly. For many, the word desiderata most often evokes the famous poem by [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Awkward
• ?March 12, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?58 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same [...]
• How do you use this slippery piece of punctuation: the slash?
• ?March 7, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Grammar, History, Punctuation ?110 Comments
• The slash (/)—sometimes called a slant, a solidus, a stroke, or a virgule—is a commonly employed symbol in the English language. Whatever you want to call this piece of punctuation, its role in English has greatly changed over time.
• Lexical Investigations: Labyrinth
• ?March 5, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?45 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Balaclava
• ?February 26, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?50 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Mazel Tov
• ?February 19, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?13 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same [...]
• How do you say “basketball” in Latin? And what does it have to do with the retiring pope?
• ?February 17, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, History, Language ?137 Comments
• News of Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement has brought the Latin language to the front and center of minds worldwide. For one thing, the Pope announced his retirement in Latin. Giovanna Chirri, an Italian journalist assigned to the Vatican beat, was able to break the story before her peers thanks to her knowledge of the dead [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Holistic
• ?February 12, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?19 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated.
• The Value of Signs: Saussure’s rebuttal
• ?February 11, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, neurology, Science ?40 Comments
• We’ve reached the final installment of our series on Ferdinand de Saussure and the scintillating study of semiology. In our last post we left our friend Saussure in a rather unflattering light, when we explored the first scientific evidence against his hypothesis: that the relationship between the sign (a word) and the signified (the concept [...]
• scrabble
• Are Scrabble tile values in need of an overhaul?
• ?February 6, 2013 ?by: Jane Solomon ?in: alphabet, computers ?132 Comments
• Invented by out-of-work architect Alfred Butts during the Great Depression, Scrabble is a staple of word lovers’ lives. The popularity of this beloved game took off in the mid-1950s and has been an essential part of the canon of classic board games ever since.
• Lexical Investigations: Art
• ?February 5, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?22 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same thing.)
• When dictionaries are a matter of life or death…
• ?February 4, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?91 Comments
• Two recent events have raised the complicated question of whether or not dictionaries belong in courtrooms. A murder trial in Virginia was disrupted because the jurors illicitly consulted two dictionaries and a thesaurus. (The defense is currently seeking a mistrial.) And even on the Supreme Court it seems dictionaries are being misused.
• Baltimore Ravens: The only football team named after a poem!
• ?February 1, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?16 Comments
• A lot of football teams are named after birds (e.g., the Philadelphia Eagles, the Atlanta Falcons), but of all our feathered mascots only one comes from a poem: The Baltimore Ravens.
• Why is the San Francisco football team called the 49ers?
• ?January 31, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning, History ?25 Comments
• When the California Gold Rush began in 1848, American football didn’t exist. But those aggressive gold miners would give their nickname to a football team one hundred years later. Gold was first found in Northern California in January 1848, and it took about a year for the news to travel and inspire thousands of fortune [...]
• Lexical Investigations: Appendix
• ?January 29, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language, Lexical Investigations ?17 Comments
• A motley combination of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Germanic dialects, the English language (more or less as we know it) coalesced between the 9th and 13th centuries. Since then, it has continued to import and borrow words and expressions from around the world, and the meanings have mutated. (Awesome and awful once meant nearly the same [...]
• Was Saussure wrong?
• ?January 23, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language, neurology ?27 Comments
• Welcome to the second installment in our series on Ferdinand de Saussure and the linguistic science of semiology. Now where were we? In the last post we discussed Saussure’s theory of the “sign” as a combination of the “signified” (the concept represented by a word) and the “signifier” (the spoken or written word doing the [...]
• Where do words come from? Do they really mean anything?
• ?January 16, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?129 Comments
• How do we use language? We use it to express ourselves through speech, to record our experiences or to invent and tell stories in writing. But before all that begins, before a word leaves our lips or a pen hits the page, we use language in our heads. This code we share is more than [...]
• The words you want to banish in 2013
• ?January 3, 2013 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Grammar, Language ?434 Comments
• Last week, we discussed the Worst Words of 2012. We were originally inspired by past lists from Lake Superior State University in Michigan. Every year they compile words that were misused, overused, and abused, and this week they released their list for 2013, which included some choice words that we had overlooked:
• The Worst Words of 2012
• ?December 20, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Grammar, Language ?275 Comments
• 2012 has been an interesting time in the life of our lexicon. From new coinages to new usages, English has had a nice growth spurt. Some neologisms quickly outgrow their usefulness, or through overuse, they become meaningless, like an overplayed song on the radio. Here are a few terms that many people have grown tired [...]
• How do you sign “heterogeneous mixture” to a deaf person?
• ?December 17, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, Language, Science, translation ?33 Comments
• Imagine you’re sitting in a high school biology class or a college chemistry lab. The professor is giving a heated lecture using a whole host of long, difficult words. But every time she says “heterogeneous mixture” or “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle” she spells out the entire term one letter at a time. That’s what life is [...]
• 11/11: Why is today so special
• ?November 7, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?35 Comments
• 11 is a very odd number and has been subject to much interpretation over the ages. According to Yahoo! News, medieval scholars believed that while most numbers had positive and negative qualities, the number 11represented pure evil. Find out what “eleven” literally means here.
• How the prefix “franken-” took on a life of its own. . .
• ?October 25, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?135 Comments
• As Halloween quickly approaches, Frankenstorm is sneaking up on the East Coast. Forecasters are calling the hurricane headed for New York, New Jersey, and as far inland as Ohio, “Frankenstorm” because (like the monster in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus) this storm is stitched together from three different weather systems
• Could an animal speak? Not just bark or meow, but actually speak.
• ?October 23, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language ?120 Comments
• From Dr. Doolittle to Jane Goodall, human-animal communication has occupied our thoughts both in fiction and in reality. Dogs recognize their names when they are called; researchers have successfully taught primates to communicate in sign language; and the famed African gray parrot, Alex, built a vocabulary of over 100 English words out of which he [...]
• Who put the $ in Ke$ha? Where did the $ come from?
• ?October 11, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?117 Comments
• From the California dance band !!! to MIA spelling out her name in dashes, musical artists seem to love putting symbols in their names. Perhaps none more notable than pop star, Ke$ha who differentiates herself with a single letter substitution.
• How much talking does your body do?
• ?October 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning, Language ?88 Comments
• The phrase “body language” or nonverbal communication often gets tossed around. From public speaking to a first date, our movements and facial expressions say a lot about our feelings and intentions. Now, as we enter into political debate season, politicians’ body language will be under just as much scrutiny as their remarks, and if the [...]
• SAT writing scores drop to lowest in history. What does this mean for America’s vocabulary?
• ?October 1, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, reading ?54 Comments
• What comes to mind when you think about getting into college? Your grades, your personal essay, and of course, your SAT scores. The test that rules the lives of so many high school students was first administered in 1926. At that time “SAT” stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test. But today, after countless name changes the exam [...]
• Do babies speak with an accent?
• ?September 26, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, neurology ?203 Comments
• We all know that infants don’t actually speak with an accent because they don’t really speak at all. But for a long time scientists presumed that infants’ brains could not process sounds at all. Professor Patricia Kuhl, the director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning at the University of Washington, wanted to test [...]
• What word did you last look up, and why?
• ?September 19, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?455 Comments
• Recently we asked members of the Dictionary.com Facebook page a simple question: What was the last word you looked up, what was the specific issue you were trying to solve, and what were the circumstances? The results floored us. At last count, more than 450 people shared their stories. Here are a few examples: “Looked up [...]
• How did this new species of monkey get its name, and what does it mean?
• ?September 14, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, etymology, Language, Science ?162 Comments
• You may have read the news about the discovery of a new species of monkey in Africa, known as the Lesula, or Cercopithecus lomamiensis. The announcement of any new species is thrilling, and Lesula is only the second new primate species to be identified in the past 28 years. When something as rare and significant [...]
• Why do left and right mean liberal and conservative?
• ?September 13, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, hidden meaning ?68 Comments
• During the election season the words left and right denote political affiliation more than spatial direction. But where do these associations come from? The left hand has long been associated with deviance. The word “sinister” originally meant “to the left” in Latin. The word “left” comes from the Old English word lyft, which literally meant [...]
• Could English exist without the letter G?
• ?September 6, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?163 Comments
• Can you imagine a world in which the sounds of G and C were both represented by the letter C? Try to imacine it. Believe it or not, for much of their history, the sounds of C and G were represented by the same symbol. Eventually, however, both sounds received their own differentiated symbols.
• Two words may cost $548 million? Find out why
• ?August 26, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?60 Comments
• Words are powerful, but rarely can you put a specific dollar value on them. Here’s a case where two words have put a chunk of change at stake: How about half a billion dollars? Earlier this month, the Santa Clara Valley Water District in Northern California turned in a ballot proposal to put a $548 [...]
• How do people cheat at Scrabble?
• ?August 15, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Current Events ?51 Comments
• A promising young Scrabble player was just ejected from a national five-day tournament in Florida after he was caught cheating. You may be wondering: how can you cheat at Scrabble?
• What is lost when a language goes extinct?
• ?August 12, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?61 Comments
• Are some languages able to express certain ideas better than others? Are there concepts that exist in particular languages and nowhere else? As more and more languages become extinct, linguists are realizing that they contain a type of knowledge beyond simply a different set of words and grammar. In the next fifty years, linguists believe that 3,500 languages [...]
• Do you ever wish you could eliminate some of the ambiguity in English? Read about a language that was created for that purpose.
• ?July 25, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?129 Comments
• Have you felt that English wasn’t rationally constructed? Do you ever wonder, for instance, why we made “affect” and “effect” seem so similar when they mean two different things? Or why “you’re” are “your” sound identical, but are dissimilar in meaning? Couldn’t we have designed something little bit more simple? About two decades ago, a [...]
• pandr
• Were P and R Once the Same Letter?
• ?July 12, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?139 Comments
• Do you ever stop and look at the shape of our alphabet? Each letter looks natural to us now, but all those lines and circles have unique histories. It’s easy to make assumptions that our letters make sense, that they developed in some orderly logical way, and one reasonable assumption would be that P and [...]
• octothorpe, hashtag, number sign
• What Is the Real Name of the #?
• ?June 25, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, computers, etymology ?200 Comments
• On Facebook and Twitter, you tag your friends with the @ symbol and topics with the #. If you see something that says #WordoftheDay, the tweet or post will concern the Word of the Day in some way. But what do you call the # symbol? Where did it come from? Its myriad names and [...]
• Linguists recently found an Indo-European language hiding in rural Pakistan. Learn its story here.
• ?June 22, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?66 Comments
• At some point you’ve heard about the concept of language “families.” Generally, common sense defines how language relationships work: geographic neighbors often share a common ancestor. If this story were consistent, however, there wouldn’t be anything interesting for us to talk about. Take for example, this amazing discovery stemming from 20 years of research.
• Can you see the difference between those symbols?
• ?June 11, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, etymology ?97 Comments
• Though one of the least-used letters, X has a remarkable way of getting attention. Last year we talked about the varied uses of X: Gen X, Xbox, XOXO, the X chromosome. British dramatist Ben Jonson wanted to remove the 24th letter from the alphabet
• Dictionaries attack! Hackers use dictionaries to guess your passwords
• ?June 8, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Language ?90 Comments
• If you are one of the 161 million members of LinkedIn, you were probably rankled by the news earlier this week that millions of their passwords had been hacked and published online - especially if you also use your LinkedIn password for your Facebook, e-mail or bank account. One way hackers fish out passwords is [...]
• Obscure language isolate will die with this woman
• ?June 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?235 Comments
• Seventy-five-year-old Gyani Maiyi Sen is the only native fluent speaker of Kusunda in the world, and linguists are rushing to record the unique language. Around the globe languages are dying rapidly as more and more people are learning global languages instead of maintaining their native tongues.
• Language debate sparks fistfight in the Ukrainian Parliament
• ?May 25, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?82 Comments
• In 1991, after 69 years as a Soviet Republic, Ukraine became an independent state. Today Ukraine’s only national language is Ukrainian, even though many citizens still speak Russian. In the Ukrainian Parliament last week the President Viktor Yanukovych’s party proposed a new law to make Russian the second official language in the eastern regions of [...]
• Should business be English-only?
• ?May 18, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?112 Comments
• The Harvard Business Review recently reported that multinational corporations are encouraging—or mandating—their employees to speak English. Samsung, Airbus, Microsoft in Beijing and many others now enforce English as the language of their business. Even corporations that are based in foreign countries, like Renault in France and Rakuten in Japan, are mandating English
• English used to have gendered nouns?! Yes!
• ?May 16, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Grammar, Language ?452 Comments
• If you speak another language like Spanish or German, you are familiar with grammatical gender. In Romance languages (and many others), nouns have a gender. In French, a chair is la chaise, a feminine noun, and a hat is le chapeau, a masculine noun. But did you know that English used to have gendered nouns [...]
• What do these flowers secretly say?
• ?May 12, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?62 Comments
• Like precious stones and tarot cards, flowers have a secret meaning that only some understand. Different flowers represent sorrow, repentance, unrequited love, or beauty. Here are some of the most popular Mother’s Day flowers and their associated meanings. Do you know what these blooms really mean?
• What long-forgotten goddess is May named for? Why is May also a verb?
• ?May 10, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?150 Comments
• If you frequent our posts, you may detect a common theme: behind the everyday nature of common words, surprising meaning and history often lurk. Case in point: this very month of May. The fifth month of the Gregorian calendar, May, is named after a goddess named Maia. But which goddess named Maia?
• Two related languages are found on opposite sides of the globe.
• ?May 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?271 Comments
• Have you heard the story of the Tower of Babel? According to the Bible, all of humanity lived together in harmony, until God decided to confuse the languages and spread the people across the Earth. This story points to one of the great mysteries of human culture: why do we all speak different languages? Our [...]
• We added more than 300 updated and new definitions to Dictionary.com!
• ?April 23, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?90 Comments
• We updated our dictionary! You now have a new and improved Dictionary.com. How can something be both “new” and “improved”? We added 183 new words and updated 146 existing definitions to reflect our ever-evolving language. We also added more detailed notes about word usage, word history, and synonyms to some very particular words
• Can baboons read? Kind of.
• ?April 19, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language, reading ?157 Comments
• Earlier this year, French behavioral scientist Jonathan Grainger and his team taught baboons to read. Well, not exactly. They taught the baboons to recognize words. The baboons played a game on a computer screen. When a fake word appears, they were supposed to press a blue plus sign. When a real word shows up, they [...]
• Are some languages really faster than English? Does that mean slower languages are less effective?
• ?April 16, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?139 Comments
• Think of when you’ve listened to someone speak Spanish or Japanese. Does it seem the words flow out very quickly, faster than other languages? Academics would agree with you. For the last decade, linguists have speculated that different languages are spoken at significantly different rates. The challenge has been how to measure the respective speeds.
• When did the letter U enter the alphabet? It will surprise you.
• ?April 9, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?133 Comments
• There was no letter U in the alphabet. Well, that’s not the entire story. There was the sound for the letter we call U, but it didn’t look like U. It looked like V. The Classical Latin alphabet had only 23 letters, not the 26 that we have today. (This is why the W looks [...]
• Is this the sound of dolphins saying hello?
• ?April 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language ?92 Comments
• Scientists have long known that animals communicate with each other. Some species (like the vervet monkeys) make particular sounds that represent a specific direction or warning to others, but we don’t really know how animal groups relate to each other linguistically in the wild. Recently, scientists discovered that bottlenose dolphins
• Would you learn a new language if it would help your health?
• ?April 2, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, neurology ?85 Comments
• Would you learn a new language if it would help your health? You may have heard that bilingual children actually have more brainpower than kids who grow up speaking only one language.
• Why did Facebook trademark the word “book”? Is that legal?
• ?March 28, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Current Events, Language ?188 Comments
• Facebook’s newest user agreement set off some red flags. When you logged onto your Facebook account today, you agreed that: “You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall), or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines [...]
• hardestlang
• What Language Is Hardest to Learn?
• ?March 27, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?333 Comments
• Learning a new language always takes time and effort, but are some languages easier to learn than others? There are two answers, one of which is fairly obvious; the other has to do with music and different sides of your brain.
• What’s the word problem at the heart of Mad Men?
• ?March 21, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?150 Comments
• There has been much ado about the specific clothing, furniture, and products in the hit AMC series Mad Men. Of course, fans love the accurate details. The afternoon cocktails and elaborate dresses are a constant reminder of how much has changed in the 50 years since the 1960s. The show gets the set right, but what [...]
• Words are dying right now. Are you helping to kill them?
• ?March 16, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?216 Comments
• A group of physicists recently collaborated on a statistical survey of words. You may be wondering why physicists are interested in language. In this case, it is not language per se, but how words imitate the statistical patterns of the stock market and animal populations.
• Will you miss the physical encyclopedia?
• ?March 15, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, reading ?119 Comments
• Encyclopedia Britannica announced that they will stop publishing print editions of their books. The renowned encyclopedia publisher was not slow in jumping on the digital bandwagon: they published a version for computers as early as 1981, and they went online in 1994.
• Why is the word “salt” flagged by China’s internet censors?
• ?March 13, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Current Events, Language ?140 Comments
• Censorship is probably as old as language itself. Okay, maybe it’s not that old, but there were censorship laws in Ancient Greece and in Dynastic China more than 2,000 years ago. From the Latin verb censere meaning ”to appraise, value or judge,” the word “censor” was first used to name the Roman official who oversaw public [...]
• English is read from left to right, but are some languages written from right to left or from top to bottom?
• ?March 11, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Language ?116 Comments
• News flash: Twitter now comes in 28 languages - including Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Urdu, which are written from right-to-left. Twitter has long supported right-to-left text from users, but it now has instructions and can display hashtags from right-to-left as well. Why are some languages written from right to left and others from left to [...]
• What are the most-used words in English?
• ?March 6, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?158 Comments
• What word will you say the most often in your life? The word you use most commonly is probably the word all English-speakers use: the. What are the most-used words in the English language?
• capital
• Why Do We Capitalize I?
• ?February 29, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Grammar, reading ?382 Comments
• Why do we capitalize the first-person pronoun, I? The short answer is because we do. But that’s not a very satisfactory answer. Even though it feels natural to English speakers, capitalizing I is unusual. In fact, English is the only language that does. Germanic and Romantic languages typically have some conventions for capitalizing proper nouns, [...]
• Should you say “between you and I” or “between you and me”?
• ?February 27, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?222 Comments
• Grammar is a combination of rules and conventions. What is the difference? Well, there are the rules, like a verb must agree with its subject. By that rule, “he say” is incorrect. Then there are conventions, which are uses of language that are common enough that even though they break the “rules” they become “correct” [...]
• Where is the Middle East? The Near East? The Far East?
• ?February 24, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?96 Comments
• It’s no surprise that many of our place names are relatively new to English. Some (like Far East) were born during British colonization, but “Near East” and “Middle East” are more modern than that. The word “east” is derived from the Sanskrit word “usas” meaning “dawn” or “morning.” From the perspective of Europe and Asia, [...]
• Jay-Z and Beyoncé trademarked their daughter’s name. Why?
• ?February 18, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?423 Comments
• It’s true: Jay-Z and Beyoncé trademarked their daughter’s name, “Blue Ivy Carter.” You may be asking yourself: can you even do that? Trademark a name? Does that mean you could trademark the word “the” or “and”? Well, trademark law has some interesting leeways and limits. Before Jay-Z and Beyoncé submitted their application,
• Can computers understand online conversations?
• ?February 15, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Language ?107 Comments
• New software being developed at Oxford University may be able to instantly measure the emotions and reactions of large populations by evaluating the words we use on the internet. Investors seem to think this idea will pay off. So, why do we care? Well, this software, called TheySay, uses something called corpora linguistics, which basically [...]
• Why do lowercase letters look very different than their uppercase counterparts?
• ?February 11, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Grammar, reading ?141 Comments
• Take a moment and open the last email you wrote. It’s okay. We’ll wait. Now imagine if you had to write it out on paper, not with a ballpoint pen, but with a pen that you had to dip into a bowl of ink every few words. And make sure not to drip any ink [...]
• Where will Los Angeles be in 50 million years? Beijing?
• ?February 9, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?67 Comments
• Where would you have lived 200 million years ago? And will your descendants in Los Angeles or Bangkok live in Amasia instead of Asia or North America? Maybe you’ve heard of Pangaea - the theoretical supercontinent that existed 200-300 million years ago and consisted of all the landmasses pushed together. Coined by Alfred Wegener in [...]
• Does your language affect your bank account?
• ?February 7, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?126 Comments
• New research argues that the answer is yes. Depending on what language you speak, you are more - or less - likely to save for retirement. Your primary tongue may even affect how much you weigh. In January, M. Keith Chen, an associate professor of economics at the School of Management at Yale University, published [...]



• Can you tell the future with our Word of the Day?
• ?February 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?65 Comments
• Some people use the Word of the Day to learn a new, unusual word every day. Others use it like a Magic 8 ball, to provide guidance or to predict the future. To our delight, others use it to make rap videos. Yesterday, we ran across a video that featured one of our devoted Word [...]
• Why Are There Two Kinds of Football?
• ?February 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?88 Comments
• We originally published this blog in June 2010, but in honor of the World Cup, we are revisiting the subject. *** If you’re reading this in the U.S. or Canada, then maybe you love soccer. If you’re reading this pretty much anywhere else, then perhaps you love football. One person’s idea of a cute habit is responsible for [...]
• A Brief History of the Letter H
• ?January 31, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?118 Comments
• Though it’s a high-value letter in Scrabble and Words with Friends, H is a relatively common letter. Statistically speaking, it is the eighth most commonly used letter in the English language. That’s because H is usually paired with other consonants like wh, ch, sh, and gh. H is found in the most common two-letter pair (th) [...]



• Where did the word “vegan” come from?
• ?January 28, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?75 Comments
• There are, of course, many ethical and health controversies surrounding vegetarianism in all its different forms, but we wanted to know - where did the words come from? Who invented “veganism”? Vegetarianism has been around for a very long time. Some historians date it back to Ancient Greek philosophers, and religious sects of Buddhism and [...]
• Is English an innately positive language? Scientists say yes.
• ?January 26, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?79 Comments
• Mathematicians at the University of Vermont have been meddling in a field very far from boring numbers. Earlier this month, they officially declared the English language “optimistic” based on a careful analysis that combined statistics and subtle human evaluation. The researchers, led by assistant professor Chris Danforth, aggregated texts from Twitter,
• A language spoken in only one town
• ?January 22, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?90 Comments
• Last week, we stumbled upon this article from the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler about a language hidden in rural Portugal. In the northeast corner of Portugal, there is a tiny county called Miranda do Douro and in Miranda do Douro many inhabitants do not speak Portuguese, but rather its distant cousin, Mirandese. This region [...]
• What do you do with a swearing toddler?
• ?January 19, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?151 Comments
• Profanity is in the air, it seems. Earlier this week in Britain on the TV game show Countdown (which is a live variation of Boggle), a contestant saw a British swear word in the jumbled letters and was awarded points because it was “in the dictionary” as the host said. You can watch the clip from [...]
• How old is “Thirty days has September…”?
• ?January 18, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?100 Comments
• Every school child learns the months of year with an easy rhyme: thirty days has September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one, except February alone… How exactly does it end? We’re not entirely sure, but the first lines continue to help us remember the idiosyncrasies of our calendar. (Rhymes or phrases that [...]
• How many languages has the Bible been translated into? Why does it matter?
• ?January 15, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language, reading ?168 Comments
• If you were go into a Christian church in America, the congregation would probably be speaking English, maybe Spanish, maybe another modern language. But they almost definitely would not be speaking Aramaic or Greek, the languages that the Christian Bible was written in. So why do we not read the Bible in Greek? And how [...]
• The words you want to banish in 2012
• ?January 11, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?640 Comments
• Last week, we discussed the suggested list of Banished Words for 2012, a list of words developed by a former journalist at Lake Superior State University in Michigan of words that were misused, overused, and abused in 2011 that should not be used in 2012. This list is designed to capture an ort of our [...]
• How do you learn to speak more than 12 languages?
• ?January 9, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?136 Comments
• Have you ever dreamed of being able to speak dozens of languages? A new book, Babel No More by journalist Michael Erard, traces the history of people who can do just that: hyperpolyglots, people who speak 11 or more languages. Obviously, hyperpolyglotism is a trained skill. No one just wakes up speaking multiple languages, but [...]
• Should overused words be banished?
• ?January 4, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Grammar, Language ?536 Comments
• Earlier this week NPR’s All Things Considered announced what they called the 2011 Banished Words of the Year. Compiled by a former journalist at Lake Superior State University in Michigan, the list is an inversion of the 2011 most important words list. Rather than words that accurately describe the past year’s events, the Banished Words [...]
• What is the word problem in tonight’s meteor shower?
• ?January 3, 2012 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?42 Comments
• Tonight’s meteor shower has an anachronistic name. It was originally named after the constellation Quadrans Muralis, discovered by Jerome Lalande in 1795. Well, “discover” may be the wrong word. Today, the International Astronomical Union no longer recognizes this constellation, rather the stars that were a part of it are now considered to be parts of other, more [...]
• Twinkle, twinkle: The hidden purpose behind the silliness of nursery rhymes
• ?December 26, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, hidden meaning, reading ?107 Comments
• Nursery rhymes rely on meter and rhyme to stick into our memories. When we remember them, we do not remember just the words; we remember them in time, sometimes even with their pitch. Before children acquire words and syntax, parents naturally talk to them in a particular style. In the late 1980s, psychologist
• Netherlands, Dutch, demonym
• Why Are People from the Netherlands Called Dutch?
• ?December 16, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?382 Comments
• As we’ve discussed before, if you live in Michigan, you may consider yourself a Michigander or a Michiganian. (Check it out.) But why are demonyms so various and seemingly random? (A demonym is any name derived from a place. The word “demonym” was coined by Paul Dickson, an editor at Merriam-Webster, in his 1997 book [...]
• Why did “noon” used to mean 3:00?
• ?December 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?77 Comments
• The biggest surprises tend to hide in plain sight. We’ve found this to be true with the origins of words like hello (check it out), and especially the somewhat naughty roots of Miss (read about that here.) With noon, we’ve uncovered a remarkable fact that will change how you think of 12:00. First, some essential [...]
• How does classic children’s novel, The Phantom Tollbooth, use words themselves as a plot device?
• ?December 9, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language, reading ?118 Comments
• Every work of literature relies on the dictionary. Many writers would say that the goal of fiction is to use powerful words to tell a story without calling attention to the words themselves. A small number of books, however, actually make words, meaning, and language their plot or even transform the workings of language into [...]
• Why is a new element named after a suburb of San Francisco?
• ?December 6, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?132 Comments
• On Saturday the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry proposed the names of two new elements. Currently element number 114 and element number 116 do not have official names in the periodic table of elements. The elements were previously known as ununquadium and ununhexium. Those long, unpronounceable words were the temporarily used systematic element [...]
• Why Tergiversate Is Our 2011 Word of the Year
• ?November 30, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?86 Comments
• There are essentially two ways to pick a “word of the year.” One common approach is to select from words whose common usage reflects some quality of the year past. Expect to see “occupy,” “winning,” etc., on many selections this December. Another way involves actually using the dictionary. Is there a word that captures the [...]
• How are words added to the dictionary?
• ?November 28, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language, reading ?77 Comments
• The study of words is called lexicology—not to be confused with phraseology, philology, syntax, morphology, lexicography or semantics. How do lexicologists create new words? Actually, they don’t—think how ridiculous it would be if a deranged lexicologist had the power and desire to create hundreds of new words? Rather they observe the way English is used [...]
• Why is Catholic Church changing its official Mass?
• ?November 25, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?190 Comments
• This weekend the Catholic Church is changing the required English-language Mass. This is a big deal because it is the third time in the 1700-year history of the Church that the Mass is being formally changed, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. First let’s review a brief history of the Catholic Church. The Church and its [...]
• Why this word is causing so much controversy
• ?November 22, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, Language ?1 Comment
• Today the word “uppity” rose to number seven on Google’s list of extremely popular searches. The reason? Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as “uppity-ish.” Specifically, Limbaugh was discussing a Nascar rally on Sunday the 20th where Michelle Obama was booed by the crowd. Limbaugh said he believed the [...]
• Is pizza really a vegetable?
• ?November 20, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Education, Language ?386 Comments
• You may have heard that the U.S. Congress recently reaffirmed that pizza is a vegetable. Of course, the situation is more complicated than that. The U.S. Department of Agriculture—which regulates the school lunches served to millions of American children—proposed a new standard for school lunches. Specifically, they suggested reducing the amount of sodium in school [...]
• How music helped Gabrielle Giffords relearn words
• ?November 17, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language, neurology ?141 Comments
• In January, when Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded, it was unclear whether she would fully recuperate or regain her ability to talk. Giffords was injured on the left side of her brain near the section called Broca’s area that controls language. However, recovery specialists have started using a unique, unexpected therapy to help patients recover their [...]
• Oh my! What occupy used to mean may make you blush
• ?November 15, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?195 Comments
• From Portland to St. Louis, the Occupy protests have been gaining momentum and continue to be front-page news. The protests sent us to the dictionary (where else?) to look up the etymology of the word “occupy.” We found an unexpected obsolete definition. The term occupy formerly meant something very different than its current common meaning. [...]
• What do you call a sweet bubbly beverage?
• ?November 13, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?576 Comments
• If you’ve ever traveled within the U.S. and tried to order a sweet carbonated beverage, you’ve probably been misunderstood and confused. Depending on where you are, a soft drink might be called any number of things: coke, soda, pop. Ask anyone which is the right word and they will vehemently defend their preference, but why [...]
• What should be the 2011 Word of the Year? We have a few ideas
• ?November 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?344 Comments
• It’s only November, but Best of the Year lists are going around and the time has come to discuss the Word of 2011. A couple of weeks ago, we asked our Facebook fans for early candidates for the year-defining term. Of course, the political turmoil of the 2011 dominated the responses. Occupy and revolution were [...]
• How can a font alleviate reading problems?
• ?October 31, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, neurology, reading ?106 Comments
• Dyslexics invert and transpose letters because they confuse letters that look alike. The switching of b and d, for example, is very common because the letters are simply reflections of each other. (In fact, dyslexia is much more common for English readers than readers of other languages, like Italian, in which words are spelled phonetically [...]
• Can you tell psychopaths by the way they speak?
• ?October 27, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?255 Comments
• Have you ever met someone and thought they were a little off? Just by the way someone speaks, we can pick up on social cues and emotional intelligence that give us certain impressions about them. Communications researchers have taken this hunch to another level. They interviewed convicted murderers whose self-reported tests reveal them to be [...]
• How do computers help decode inscrutable ciphers?
• ?October 26, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Language ?73 Comments
• Back in the 1940s, mathematician Warren Weaver made an audacious suggestion: what if translation was not a feat of literary theory and linguistics, but one of cryptography? Weaver suggested treating a foreign text as if it were a code to be broken. (This theory was the early basis of machine translation, a subfield of computational linguistics.) [...]
• An exciting new addition to ancient history? How one important book was uncovered from within another book.
• ?October 21, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, reading ?64 Comments
• After years of research, the Archimedes’ Palimpsest is now on display at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Like anything more than a thousand years old, it has an intriguing story to tell. But what’s a palimpsest? This confusing word has a very particular definition. A palimpsest is a text written on parchment, vellum [...]
• Why can’t you say chmlk? What makes a vowel?
• ?October 18, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, etymology, Language, reading ?199 Comments
• In elementary school, we all learned the vowels of the English language: a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y. But what makes a vowel a vowel? Vowels and consonants are essentially two different categories of sounds that linguists use to better understand how language sounds work. The study of the sounds that human beings can produce is [...]
• How does the brain compute language? Will it turn us into cyborgs?
• ?October 16, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Language, neurology ?158 Comments
• Though neurology has made great strides in the past two decades, the brain is still the least understood organ in the body. How does it make thoughts? Even though research has not yet answered that question, a few intrepid scientists think that we will soon be able to communicate with machines using only our minds. [...]
• Why do we call them berries?
• ?October 13, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?105 Comments
• The berry family is a linguistic invention particular to Germanic languages, like English. Other languages, like Spanish and French, do not combine the wide, diverse berry family into one group, but rather have very different words for blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. The word berry comes from the Old English berie, which originally meant “grape.” As the [...]
• How do CAPTCHAs test our human identity by making our language unrecognizable?
• ?October 11, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, neurology, reading ?298 Comments
• Wherever we go on the internet, we encounter CAPTCHAs, those twisted words that block or enable entries on websites. Need to post an ad on Craigslist? There’s a CAPTCHA. Want to comment on an article or blog post? There’s a CAPTCHA. So why do we have them? They were invented to block spamming machines from [...]
• Will English no longer be spoken in space?
• ?October 6, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?154 Comments
• Earlier this week, NASA announced that it is looking for new astronauts. Though NASA has sent its last shuttle into space, it will continue to send astronauts to the International Space Station through a collaboration with the Russian Federal Space Agency. NASA has promised to help staff the International Space Station (ISS) through at least [...]
• What does it mean to be “fluent” in a language?
• ?October 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language, reading ?276 Comments
• Currently, the Arizona Board of Education is deciding if teachers who speak with an accent are fluent in English. (Read the full story here.) We have all heard how differently people in London, New York, or Baton Rouge speak English, but are those different speakers still fluent in English? Where does accent stop and fluency [...]
• When did the New York Times first use an emoticon? 1862. This word helps explain why.
• ?October 3, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, hidden meaning, Language ?59 Comments
• Last week the New York Times ran this headline: “Twitter Study Tracks When We Are : )” Notice anything odd for official newspaper-speak? That little emoticon printed in a venerated newspaper suggests growing acceptance of abbreviations and pictographic communication. Of course, the article is about the internet and technology, so a nod to common electronic communication is appropriate and [...]
• Why are some letters tied together?
• ?September 29, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Grammar, reading ?163 Comments
• It is hard to remember that fonts originated in handwriting, but occasionally reminders, like ligatures, pop up. “Ligature” literally means to bind or tie up, so when two letters are tied together in script, it is called a ligature. Medieval scribes combined letters that shared some part, so they could write faster and conserve space on the [...]
• How does language influence how we think?
• ?September 26, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?169 Comments
• Language shapes how we think about the world. Benjamin Whorf, a linguist in the early 1900s, called this phenomenon linguistic relativity. It is often said that the Eskimos have fifty words for snow, but it turns out that’s not true. Eskimo-Aleut languages have about as many words for snow as the English language. But the [...]
• Did you know that American Sign Language is not related to English?
• ?September 23, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Language ?140 Comments
• On the occasion of Deaf Awareness Week, we wanted to talk about the language of the deaf community, American Sign Language (ASL). Contrary to public perception, ASL is not related to English. ASL, a manual language that relies on movement rather than sound to denote meaning, actually grew out of French Sign Language in the [...]
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• Fall Once Had a Different Name
• ?September 21, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology, Language ?252 Comments
• The season we call fall was once referred to simply as “harvest” to reflect the time when farmers gathered their crops for winter storage, roughly between August and November. Astronomically, the season lasts from the end of the September until December, between the autumnal equinox and the "winter solstice" in the Northern Hemisphere. (Want to learn [...]
• Neanderthal? Cro-Magnon? Who’s who?
• ?September 19, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language, Science ?83 Comments
• When talking about fossils, there are a lot of confusing words: Neanderthal, paleoanthropologist, homo erectus. First off, the scientists: paleoanthropologists study extinct ancestors of human beings. Paleo means old or ancient and anthro means relating to human beings. Now let’s discuss the specimens themselves. Our very distant
• You can debunk something, but why can’t you bunk something?
• ?September 16, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Grammar, Language ?122 Comments
• As readers, we recognize prefixes, like dis-, in-, non- and un-, as expressing negation. We immediately know that “unfair” means “not fair.” However, there are some clear exceptions to these rules. Such anomalies can cause confusion for a few reasons. For one, the prefix in- also literally means “in,” such as inquire, inclose, and insure. [...]
• The effect of dyslexia on words
• ?September 12, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, neurology, reading ?151 Comments
• Letters are the most ubiquitous symbols around us. When we learn to read, we train our brains to transform these symbols into sounds and meanings. However, doctors estimate that at least 10% of the population has dyslexia. The term “dyslexia” was invented in 1887 by the German ophthalmologist Rudolf Berlin. It comes from the Greek roots [...]
• How is this man responsible for the name of New York?
• ?September 9, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?75 Comments
• Gotham, the Big Apple, the City that Never Sleeps: New York City is the emblem of America, to many, especially as we remember the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. Over the past three centuries, New York has grown to greatly overshadow its namesake, the city of York in northern England.
• These words may be removed from some dictionaries — find out why, and if you agree
• ?August 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?1,138 Comments
• No matter how clever, revolutionary, or poignant, the passage of time can render anything obsolete - even words. Recently, researchers for the Collins Dictionary released a list of words, such as charabanc and aerodrome, that are used so rarely that they are considered obsolete, and will no longer be included in smaller print dictionaries.
• Is it ever correct to say “didja?” What is the official term for “didja,” “sorta,” and “d’ya?”
• ?August 18, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?262 Comments
• Didja ever think that there are ways of speaking that feel perfectly comfortable that would seem wrong if you wrote them down? Sorta like the way this sentence is written. Lemme tell you ‘bout this very phenomenon, relaxed pronunciation. Pronunciation is defined as “the conventional patterns of treatment of the sound and stress patterns of [...]
• What is Called When You Misinterpret Lyrics?
• ?August 12, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?955 Comments
• Did you begin the school day by placing your right hand over your heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance? If you were among the many kids who thought “indivisible” was “invisible,” or “liberty” was “liver tea,” you were not alone. We don’t have a definition for liver tea, nor do we believe anyone would drink [...]
• Why is it called “rock n’ roll?” What does the “roll” mean?
• ?August 1, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?94 Comments
• Is “Rocket ‘88? by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats the very first rock and roll record? The question has inspired debate among musicologists for years. Another equally contentious question: Where does the term rock and roll come from? Rock is derived from the Old English roccain, related to the Old
• What does email style convey about the writer’s personality?
• ?July 28, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, hidden meaning, Language, reading ?171 Comments
• Like a first impression, the emails we send allow the recipient to judge us solely based on our choice of tone, punctuation and writing ability. We may come across as educated or illiterate, happy or disgruntled - it’s all in the delivery. As a recent study suggests, oftentimes the message you are trying to convey [...]
• Pluto gains a fourth moon, but what should it be named?
• ?July 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?653 Comments
• Pluto may have been demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006, but that hasn’t stopped astronomers from studying this intriguing plutoid. NASA recently announced the discovery of a fourth moon, be it a “mini-moon,” circling the former planet. Dubbed “P4” for the time being, the hunt is on for an appropriate name. The practice of [...]
• Can how a baby cries predict his or her future language skills?
• ?July 21, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, neurology, Science ?71 Comments
• According to a Japanese proverb: “A crying child thrives.” A recent study that examines the complexity of an infant’s cries in relation to his or her language development seems to offer a scientific basis for this folk wisdom. For babies whose cries exhibited complex melodies by the age of two months, the study, published in
• Why are zero and the letter “O” both circles? The answer involves both science and mysticism
• ?July 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, hidden meaning ?152 Comments
• Long, long ago, typewriters made no distinction between the number 0 and the letter O. While the two share the same shape, the origin of both number and letter are quite different. Let’s look at the distinct astrological and optical inspirations that created these seemingly identical symbols. Derived from the Semitic letter Ayin and inspired by [...]
• NBA superstar changes name to “Metta World Peace.” What does it mean?
• ?July 12, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?85 Comments
• The Los Angeles Lakers‘ Ron Artest has spent the majority of his basketball career stirring up controversy with his own brand of joie de vivre. The eccentric, at times rowdy, small forward and shooting guard now graces this column for a linguistic reason. Artest plans on officially changing his name to Metta World Peace. If, [...]
• What does “Atlantis” mean? And why is the Space Shuttle Atlantis named after something underwater?
• ?July 8, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?70 Comments
• The final space shuttle mission has blasted off, launching the fascinating word mystery of “Atlantis” into our consciousness: How did the name of a mythical kingdom thousands of leagues under the sea become the moniker for a vehicle soaring thousands of miles into space? In two of Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias - both penned around
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• Is the Semicolon Just Plain Silly?
• ?June 28, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Grammar, Language ?394 Comments
• The semicolon: is it the most maddening and mysterious punctuation mark? Many a writer avoids it altogether. When trying to express thoughts clearly, who needs a “semi” anything? Our task is not to sway your feelings, but to simply provide some definition to your like or dislike. When exactly should one use a semicolon? Fundamentally, [...]
• Do names prejudice how others perceive your status? A study suggests yes
• ?June 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?427 Comments
• Are you a Samuel or a Travis, a Katherine or an Amber? According to a recent study conducted on 89 undergraduate students, a person’s socioeconomic and educational standing may be in direct correlation with a person’s name. While researchers point out that a person’s essence, status, and general fate
• Wednesday’s Named for Two Very Different Gods
• ?June 21, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?123 Comments
• The name Wednesday derives from two mighty but distinct gods. The Old English word for Wednesday indicates that the day was named for the Germanic god Woden. In Romance languages, the name is derived from the Roman god Mercury. (For example, Wednesday is mercredi in French and
• What does Shakespeare have to do with punk rock?
• ?June 17, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?57 Comments
• A musical culture began to take shape amid the unrest of Great Britain during the mid nineteen-seventies. With the emergence of bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash, the punk rock movement sparked a nihilistic ethos and a new sound that would change the musical landscape forever. While the modern day use of the [...]
• The film "Super 8" is a hit, but what does the title mean?
• ?June 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Science ?84 Comments
• The No. 1 film at the box office this week is J.J. Abram’s “Super 8,” an homage to the work of Steven Spielberg. Millions of people have seen this film, but it’s doubtful they know what the title means. Released by Eastman Kodak in 1965, Super 8 became one of the preferred
• After 90 years, scholars finish a 21-volume dictionary for an extinct language. Why?
• ?June 12, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?53 Comments
• With over 7,000 known languages spoken around the world today, it may seem fruitless for scholars to have spent the past 90 years creating a dictionary for a language that has been extinct for nearly 2,000 years. Hold on; Let’s look at the reasons for the immense effort, and form our judgements afterwards. Originally modeled on [...]
• Why is the secret military base called "Area 51?" Why not Area 52, or 127?
• ?June 10, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, Science ?78 Comments
• Located on a remote portion of land along the southern shore of Groom Lake, approximately eighty-three miles northwest of downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, is a top secret U.S. military installation known as Area 51. Since its construction in 1955, a numerical quandary has left many a conspiracy theorist scratching their head and wondering, “What exactly [...]
• What is "Mrs." short for? The answer may make you blush (or at least laugh)
• ?June 7, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Grammar ?1,326 Comments
• History and etiquette tell us that Mister and Missus, known by the contractions Mr. and Mrs., are the proper form of address for men and women. Beneath the surface of these everyday honorifics lies a linguistic glitch that has spawned social havoc since “Mrs.” entered mainstream English in the 17th century. Mister is a direct [...]
• Will Handwriting Survive in the Digital Era?
• ?June 5, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language, Science ?171 Comments
• It didn’t start with a pen, but a reed with a brush at the tip, and it didn’t start with ink, but a mixture of soot, water and vegetable gum. There definitely was a piece of papyrus. Around 2400 BC, Egyptian culture bestowed upon the world a great gift: the ability to write on paper. [...]
• What are the most neglected words in the English language?
• ?May 31, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?182 Comments
• Wayne State University’s Word Warriors have released their top ten words to revive in 2011 . Starting in 2009, the Wayne State Word Warriors have highlighted obscure English words to bring back into common usage. Citing the vast vocabulary available in English - the biggest in the world, in fact — the Word Warriors contend [...]
• What's the difference between Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, and what is the former name of Memorial Day?
• ?May 29, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?42 Comments
• Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday during the Month of May and while it has come to signify the beginning of the summer season, it is also the solemn time when Americans remember the soldiers that died in military service. Originally named Decoration Day, a reference to a tradition of decorating the graves of the Confederate [...]
• New law bans use of confusing words and sentences in government documents. Read the results
• ?May 27, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, Current Events, Grammar, Language ?178 Comments
• On October 13, 2010, President Obama signed into law the “United States Plain Writing Act of 2010.” Thirteen years after President Clinton issued his own “Plain Writing in Government” memorandum, the revised set of guidelines states that by July of this year all government agencies must simplify the often perplexing bureaucratic jargon used in documents produced [...]
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• Why Was Z Removed from the Alphabet?
• ?May 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, etymology ?554 Comments
• What letter is used most rarely in English? Poor lonely z finishes up the alphabet at number 26. The final letter, z’s history includes a time when it was so infrequently used that it was removed altogether. The Greek zeta is the origin of the humble z. The Phoenician glyph zayin, meaning “weapon,” had a [...]
• Why you should remember the following words every 13 years or so
• ?May 22, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, etymology, Science ?74 Comments
• A vociferous buzz is radiating throughout parts of Alabama and making the news. From the brilliant first light of day to the still and dark of night, a serenade is being sung - a mating call thirteen years in the making. Millions of cicadas have come up from their underground bedrooms after completing a very [...]
• Some people believe the "Rapture" and the "Apocalypse" will happen this weekend. What do these words mean exactly?
• ?May 20, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?290 Comments
• Who knows if REM had a specific date in mind when they sang their immortal chorus, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” But according to Harold Camping, a California-based Christian radio broadcaster, May 21, 2011 will bring about a rapture that will inevitably lead to the end of [...]
• A lost, legendary dictionary is rediscovered. Where was it found, and what language is it for?
• ?May 17, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?26 Comments
• In James Boswell’s travelogue, Boswell In Holland 1763-64, the author writes: “The Scottish language is being lost every day, and in a short time will become quite unintelligible. To me, who have the true patriotic soul of an old Scotsman, that would seem a pity.” With those words, along with the encouragement of his good [...]
• What does "transgender" mean exactly, and how does the English language handle gender?
• ?May 12, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, Grammar ?92 Comments
• There is an increase in public discourse on transgender rights this spring. Nevada is considering a bill that would provide discrimination protection to transgender people in housing, public accommodation and job protections, similar to laws in place for other protected minorities. A bill in Maine addressing public accommodation for transgender people is also in the [...]
• What did the letter A originally sound and look like, and what animal was its inspiration?
• ?May 10, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, etymology, Language ?241 Comments
• There is quite a bit of mystery surrounding the letter A. From its prestigious first place position to its interesting character origin - tracing the first letter of the English alphabet uncovers a history of honor that begins with, of all things, an ox. The letter ‘A’ is derived from the Phoenician letter ‘Aleph’ - [...]
• How did Neanderthals talk? A study gives us a clue (and reveals the role of handedness in language)
• ?May 9, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?88 Comments
• Research recently published claims that Neanderthals, the ancient cousins of modern humans, were right-hand dominant just like Homo sapiens. The finding offers insights into Neanderthal brain development, including language capability. The roundabout way the discovery was made starts with a tooth. To process an
• Why do sounds close to "mama" appear in so many languages?
• ?May 7, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, Science ?77 Comments
• Mother, maman, mommy, amma, mama, em, mum, mamma, mutter, mare, maty, ana . . . Across languages an uncanny pattern appears for the word “mother.” Why? Is it evidence of universal language? Is this evidence of sound symbolism at work, when a phoneme (sound) has meaning completely unto itself? If you are a linguist, baby [...]
• Why is Thursday named for the character in a film coming out on Friday?
• ?May 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?99 Comments
• Maybe you saw The Avengers which featured a big blond guy named Thor, founding member of the Avengers. But Thursday is a bigger tribute to the Norse god of thunder than any film. After all, it is “Thor’s day.” In Norse mythology, the original Thor is the oldest son of Odin and
• What was the original name of the letter X, and how many sounds can it represent?
• ?April 26, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?142 Comments
• We’ve explored the meaning behind the “X” in Xmas, Xbox, the X-Men, and even its use in friendly and amorous correspondence (XOXO). Now it’s time to take a closer look at the origin of this multi-functional, twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. With its long, ambiguous history and multiple phonemes, the letter “X” is quite [...]
• Which nation has stronger English skills, China or India?
• ?April 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?165 Comments
• A recent online survey claims that China has better English verbal skills than neighboring India, but just barely. EF Education ranked the world’s English proficiency through an online survey between 2007 and 2008. The highest-ranking nation in the survey was Norway, China ranked 29th, and India 30th, while Kazakhstan was last at number 44. The survey was [...]
• What's the difference between a bunny, a rabbit, and a hare? (What does it have to do with Coney Island?)
• ?April 22, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, etymology ?143 Comments
• The religious content of Easter is relatively easy to explain and understand. The holiday’s substance starts to blur however, when it comes to a certain anthropomorphized bunny, baskets, pastel colors, and eggs. There’s far too much in this semantic basket to tackle; let’s start with the crucial question “what’s the difference between a rabbit, a [...]
• Why do we use capital and lower case letters, and how did both types come to be?
• ?April 18, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?218 Comments
• Capitalization rules tend to vary by language and can be quite complicated. It is widely understood that the first word of a sentence and all proper nouns are always capitalized. However, what is not so clear is the origin of the upper case distinction that has become common practice, especially in regards to Modern English. [...]
• Where and when did language begin? A remarkable new study may have the answer
• ?April 16, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?229 Comments
• The origin of spoken language has stumped linguistics dating as far back as the Twenty-sixth dynasty in Egypt and the first recorded language experiment conducted by a Pharaoh named Psammetichus I. While it is widely understood that our ability to communicate through speech sets us apart from other animals, language experts, historians and scientists can only [...]
• What do the Latin phrases and symbols on the dollar bill mean?
• ?April 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?72 Comments
• Whether you call it a buck, a single, a one or a bill, the linen and cotton-blend currency resting in your wallet at this very moment contains a smorgasbord of images, symbols and Latin phrases - some hidden in plain sight. What do they mean and, once deciphered, can they unlock a series of veiled [...]
• Three language lessons you can learn from the word "schlemiel"
• ?April 13, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, reading ?62 Comments
• In honor of National Poetry Month, let’s tackle some of the trickiest aspects of meaning — after all, poetry is one of the great ways to express subtle and slippery thoughts. Our focus today is translation. How can someone convey the meaning of a word that has no equivalent in another language? Among the toughest words to [...]
• Do bilingual babies actually have more brain power?
• ?April 12, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, Language ?219 Comments
• A recent study led by Janet Werker, a psychologist at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia, suggests that children who learn two languages at once may have increased cognitive abilities such as enhanced visual and auditory sensitivity. While Werker does not believe that a person must grow up in a bilingual environment to gain such advantages, [...]
• Tell us about when words couldn’t describe your experience — and then let’s try to find the right words
• ?April 9, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?271 Comments
• Have you ever experienced something so incomprehensible that the only words you could muster up go something like, “There are simply no words to describe?” Or: Have you ever tried to name or define an object or concept and discovered that nothing in that dictionary you carry around in your skull matches? Well, there’s a [...]
• Why is one man primarily responsible for the existence of the letter "J," and what letter did it split off from?
• ?April 8, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?180 Comments
• Recently we asked you to let us know which of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet you’d like us to investigate. A resounding number of you suggested the consonant /j/. From its humble beginnings as a Roman numeral to its eventual tenth position in the English alphabet, /j/ has had quite a linguistic journey. “J” [...]
• Want to pack more punch than a metaphor provides? Consider hypocatastasis
• ?April 6, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?176 Comments
• Metaphors and similes are figures of speech used to add flair and/or humor to a phrase. These popular rhetorical devices are all well and good, but sometimes you just need to get to the point; enter hypocatastasis. Hypo is derived from the Greek “under,” cata comes from the Ancient Greek kata, meaning “down from, or [...]
• Did one man write the first great English dictionary all by himself? Not quite, but close
• ?April 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?99 Comments
• Today, we’d like to take a moment to celebrate the man behind A Dictionary of the English Language, the first definitive English dictionary, the famous (and infamous) Dr. Samuel Johnson. A Dictionary of the English Language, also called Johnson’s Dictionary, is the work of one larger-than-life figure in English literary history. He
• What words will be changed in two new editions of the Bible?
• ?March 27, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?307 Comments
• Transcribing the text of the Bible has been an ongoing and often controversial process ever since the Greeks translated ancient Hebrew manuscripts around the 3rd century BC. The revised New International Version (NIV) and The New American Bible, respectively, will include gender-neutral language and substitute words that the editors claim will reflect a modern understanding [...]
• "American Idol" and Tourette Syndrome — what is the link, and how exactly does Tourette's affect language?
• ?March 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language, neurology ?31 Comments
• You can never predict the circumstances that rocket a word into the stratosphere of public awareness. This season’s “American Idol” has accomplished this feat for not one, but two complex illnesses: Tourette Syndrome (TS) and Asperger Syndrome (AS.) One of the “Idol” constestants, James Durbin from Santa Cruz, California, has both of these disorders. As each [...]
• What's it called when words are used to hide the meaning of other words?
• ?March 19, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Current Events, etymology ?58 Comments
• Turmoil in the Middle East; rise in demand: These are some of the reasons cited by airlines when they added a fuel surcharge, a flat fee applied across the board, to all airline tickets this week. While it is reasonable to expect transportation costs to rise when fuel is expensive, airlines have a history of [...]
• Learn the word that puts the “super” in this weekend’s “supermoon.” Plus, its ancient “worm” name
• ?March 18, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?76 Comments
• Whether you find the hype surrounding the alleged ‘extreme supermoon’ on March 19th superfluous or completely warranted, this celestial event brings with it some spectacular lunar activity and equally fun vocabulary. While the names of many moon phases are rich in folklore, the supermoon became ”super” because of Richard Nolle - an astrologer with a flair for the dramatic. Nolle [...]
• Why spelling in Irish (Gaelic) looks so familiar, yet unfamiliar
• ?March 16, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?87 Comments
• March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, or Lá Fhéile Pádraig (Irish), named for one of the most recognized of the patron saints of Ireland, Saint Patrick, who died on this date around 493 A.D. While St. Patrick is famous for allegedly driving snakes out of Ireland, he is also responsible for the oldest known Gaelic [...]
• Why is today "Pi Day," and what is pi short for in the original Greek?
• ?March 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, etymology ?71 Comments
• Today is 3/14, otherwise known as Pi Day - the holiday commemorating the mathematical constant p (pi). Since mathematic notation is a language that uses symbols from a multitude of alphabets and typefaces, it seems only fitting that this sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet get a little attention. The Latin name of the Greek [...]
• Are emoticons words, symbols, or what? Consider this possibility . . .
• ?March 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Language ?78 Comments
• You may not like it, but we all use them. Whether it is in a text message, an instant chat, or a casual email, emoticons appear in written communication to indicate the tone, humor or feeling of a message. As communication moves away from personal interaction to a text-only environment, emoticons fill the void left [...]
• What are the hardest words to translate into English? "Hyggelig" is just one on our list
• ?March 8, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, reading ?239 Comments
• There’s a running debate among translators about what word is hardest to translate. Obviously, the challenges vary from language to language, with languages that have less in common creating more elusive word to word translations. Let’s acknowledge that determining the hardest word to translate is more of a game than any sort of realistic exercise. [...]
• What is the name of the dot over "j" and "i," and why do we use them?
• ?March 7, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?69 Comments
• While many languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, add specific accents to the letters or characters throughout their alphabet - the English alphabet has only two letters that include a diacritic dot. This a mark added to a letter that is meant to signal a change in either the sound or meaning of a character. [...]
• If you’ve followed the Charlie Sheen media phenomenon, here’s a word you may want to know
• ?March 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?55 Comments
• Charlie Sheen’s debaucherous behavior and bizarre diatribes have made him the tabloid darling of the moment. There’s an “I can’t look, but I can’t not look” mentality around all-too-frequent celebrity meltdowns. If you find yourself watching other people self-destruct then you may be more familiar with the term “Schadenfreude” than you think. What does this [...]
• The sound of a chips bag opening? How do you describe it and what is the word for describing such sounds?
• ?March 2, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?149 Comments
• A few years ago Frito-Lay introduced a bag for their snack chips that was made from plants, not plastic, and could decompose in compost. It seemed like a good idea - a company putting their environmental foot forward through sustainable packaging - however, the “rip” heard upon opening the bag of chips registered at about eighty-five [...]
• How did the speech disorder “stuttering” get its name, and what does it literally mean?
• ?February 28, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, Language, neurology ?55 Comments
• “The King’s Speech” garnered four golden statues at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, including the Oscar for Best Actor for Colin Firth’s riveting portrayal of King George VI. The film’s depiction of George VI’s lifelong struggle with stuttering has brought a renewed awareness to the speech disorder that affects over sixty-eight million people worldwide. What [...]
• What’s the origin of the phrase “leap year”?
• ?February 27, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, History, Science ?34 Comments
• February 29th happens every four years and is known as a modern leap day (as opposed to the Medieval leap day: February 24th) or leap year, sometimes referred to as an intercalary year. The origin for the term leap year is derived from the Medieval Latin saltus lunae or
• What Do Romance Languages Have to Do with the Type of Romance Between Lovers?
• ?February 26, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, Language ?25 Comments
• The word romance can refer to an enchanting quality that makes a heart beat faster, but in linguistics, Romance languages are the Indo-European languages descending from Latin, such as French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Why is one word used for both? The link arises from a type of story. Romanz is the Old
• Gaddafi, Kadafi or Qaddafi? Why Is the Libyan Leader’s Name Spelled So Many Different Ways?
• ?February 25, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Grammar, Language ?66 Comments
• Take a look at any news source today and you’ll see the name of Libya’s de facto leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Look a little closer and you’ll see a multitude of spellings for the notorious politician’s surname such as Gaddafi, Kadafi and Qaddafi. Why does a name that has been making headlines for decades have so [...]
• A massive new planet in our solar system named Tyche? Maybe. But what does “Tyche” mean?
• ?February 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, History, Science ?220 Comments
• There may be a new planet joining the solar system. A provocative hypothesis posed by a duo of planetary astronomers from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette includes the existence of the planet Tyche: a ninth planet estimated to be four times the size of Jupiter located somewhere at the outermost reaches of the solar system. It’s [...]
• What is the lesser-known language millions of people speak in Spain?
• ?February 23, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, etymology, History, Language ?48 Comments
• Catalan is a Romance language spoken primarily in the Eastern and Northeastern regions of Spain, mainly Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Isles. It is the official language of Andorra, a landlocked country located in the Eastern Pyrenees (mountains bordered by Spain and France), and the second official language of Spain. The Catalan language was nearly [...]
• What is the hardest word to translate from Spanish?
• ?February 22, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, Language, translation ?123 Comments
• In lists compiled by linguists and translators, it seems “duende” is a word that many experts regard as the hardest word in Spanish to convey in other languages. In the dictionary, the word is listed as “elf” or “magic.” However, in actual
• Michigander or Michiganian? Learn what these local names are known as
• ?February 19, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?231 Comments
• Just like the old “tu’mey-tow” vs. “tu’maa-tow” debate, Michiganders, or Michiganians (depending on which side you’re on), have long found themselves in a state of disconnect. It seems that the great divide facing residents of the Great Lake State these days centers around the demonym - the name of a resident of a specific locality [...]
• gross
• What’s the Grossest-Sounding Word in English?
• ?February 18, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?2,828 Comments
• A few months ago, we asked readers to share their choices for the most beautiful sounding word in English. Nearly 500 of you shared your favorites, which included the lyrical, delightful and uplifting. Some of you shared not only your favorite but also your least favorite words. “I would like to vote ‘moist’ as the most gross [...]
• The truth behind one of the most disliked phrases in English
• ?February 17, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?146 Comments
• Admit it, whether you regard yourself as a scholar of linguistics or a self proclaimed language snob - you’ve, at least once, crossed over to the dark side and used the word “like” in a sentence where it, like, doesn’t belong. Narrowly escaping the grammar police, you catch yourself, cringe and promise never again! This [...]
• Why does the letter Q almost always need to appear with a U in order to be useful?
• ?February 17, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?101 Comments
• Scrabble players are acutely aware that Q is a tricky letter. To use a Q in the game, a player must also find an available U. The fact that Q is the second most rarely used letter in the alphabet certainly doesn’t make using Q any easier. Let’s quest towards resolving the questions of quarrelsome
• Why are they called “Terriers,” “Pekingese,” and “Bluetick Coonhounds?”
• ?February 15, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?42 Comments
• Many people approach the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show with a combination of fascination and trepidation. Awfully cute canines appear in some odd situations. Here’s some information about the fascinating names of the breeds considered the top contenders for Best in Show this year, as well as the poetic and eccentric name of one of [...]
• The book no one can read: Why can’t anyone decipher this mysterious manuscript?
• ?February 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language, reading ?142 Comments
• Inside the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University is the Voynich manuscript: a book that has come to be known as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript.” Since a team of scientists has recently determined the age of the Voynich (pronounced Voy-nitch) manuscript, we relish the opportunity to discuss this enigma as well [...]
• When you ask someone to be your “Valentine” what exactly does it mean?
• ?February 13, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning, Language ?53 Comments
• One would think that such a popular occasion as Valentine’s Day would have a clear history of the word that defines it. Since Valentine is a name, the question is not what it means, but to whom does it refer, and what did Mr. Valentine do to deserve for you to ask your beloved to [...]
• What extinct plant inspired the symbol for heart-shaped Valentines?
• ?February 9, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?90 Comments
• The shape of the heart is iconic of love, but it barely resembles the organ in our chests that the Greeks called the seat of the emotions. Why is that? Ancient coins from Cyrene, a city-state where Libya is now, show an impression of a silphium seed; it’s a shape that you know very well. [...]
• What does the name of the narwhal, one of the oddest animals on Earth, literally mean?
• ?February 8, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language ?55 Comments
• This blog always relishes a chance to write about the intersection of notable creatures and notable words. For example, when an event created an excuse to write about the zany zedonk (what the heck is that? Find out here.) celebration ensued. Now, one of the few creatures that can top the zedonk for linguistic and [...]
• Do dogs actually understand what words mean?
• ?February 8, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language ?90 Comments
• If you read the recent story about a border collie named Chaser who can understand over 1,000 English words, you may have looked over at your pet and raised an eyebrow. After saying, “wow,” this dazzling dog deal became a canine conundrum: Dogs obviously understand the same words as humans, but is it accurate to [...]
• Read the other three verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Wait, what other lyrics?
• ?February 7, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, History, Language ?92 Comments
• Post-Super Bowl, the hyped-highlights are the Green Bay Packers’ victory, the cute and funny commercials, and that Christina Aguilera flubbed “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Ms. Aguilera is catching a lot of flak for her snafu, but one can empathize with the pop singer’s dilemma. America’s national anthem is known as a major pain for even the most capable [...]
• pink flowers
• What does it mean “to pink” something, and how did the color become associated with Valentine’s Day?
• ?February 5, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?97 Comments
• You are minding your own business in the grocery store when — wham! Pink hearts and candies placed at eye level by merchants remind you that once again, Valentine’s Day is here. Why pink? How did pink become so strongly associated with February 14, roses, and romance? The word pink dates back to the 1570s, when [...]
• Why Is the Biggest Football Game of the Year Called a Bowl?
• ?February 5, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?21 Comments
• It’s hard to miss that pinnacle of American football, the Super Bowl. You’ve seen the phrase so many times that the words likely have become invisible. Rub your eyes and take a fresh look. What exactly does the bowl refer to? Bowl is the word used to describe the series of post-season games played by college [...]
• The word “caliphate” causes controversy. Learn exactly what it means
• ?February 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?55 Comments
• A few days ago, watchers of Internet trends noted a sudden peak in searches for the word “caliphate.” The source of interest turns out to be a reference made by Glenn Beck on his February 1st TV show. In speaking about the unfolding crisis in Egypt, Beck offered his view that a result could be “a [...]
• If “w” is double u, why is it made of two v’s?
• ?February 2, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?187 Comments
• The 23rd letter of the English alphabet is a bit of a wonder. The humble “w” is the only letter of the alphabet with a three-syllable name. It is also the only letter with a name that does not indicate its phonetic use. The complications of “w” are doublefold because of it’s name, ‘double u’ and [...]
• Do funky fonts actually help you remember?
• ?January 28, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, reading ?89 Comments
• In 1999, two graphic designers from Indianapolis raised a stir when they tried to discourage the use of Comic Sans MS, the silly-looking font designed by Vincent Connare and modeled after the text in American comic books. The designers observed that a font is the orthographic (written) equivalent of one’s tone of voice, and that [...]
• You may be good at Sudoku, but do you know what the word literally means?
• ?January 28, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?93 Comments
• Are you passionate about Sudoku? The number puzzle is so popular that its origin and the meaning of its name deserve some attention. (Don’t confuse the word “sudoku” with “sodoku,” which is a bacterial zoonotic disease known as “rat-bite fever.” Basically, sodoku has more in common with the Ebola virus than any puzzle game.) Sudoku is [...]
• Flotsam, jetsam, and sandbar pianos: Three mysteries revealed
• ?January 27, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?98 Comments
• A mystery has gripped Biscayne Bay since New Years, when a 650-pound baby grand piano appeared on a sandbar above the waves. Was this out-of-place instrument flotsam, the work of pirates? Was this lagan from bumbling musical smugglers? Full disclosure: This riddle has in fact been solved, and we’ll reveal the enigmatic source in a minute. There is [...]
• Meet “Mercedonius” the annoying month that used to exist (sometimes)
• ?January 26, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?50 Comments
• There are many reasons to be thankful for the benefits of modern living ? antibiotics, airplanes, velcro . . . Another subtle but essential item is our calendar. It may have some frustrating moments, but consider how months used to work. Take heed of Mercedonius. In the days of the Roman calendar, an intercalary month was added in [...]
• What does “packers” in the Green Bay Packers refer to exactly?
• ?January 25, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?61 Comments
• In a few weeks much of the world will be glued to images of men in helmets and tight pants kicking around an egg-shaped ball. You may know a ton of Super Bowl trivia, as well as all of the arcane rules of football, but how about this word right in front of you: Packers. [...]
• Dear diary . . . What’s the word for the qualities that make your writing unique?
• ?January 24, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?115 Comments
• Science magazine recently released a study on the effects of diary writing for college and high school students. The results showed that students experiencing test anxiety and who wrote about their disquiet in a diary right before the exam performed better on the test by half a grade. Dictionaries and diaries are old friends; what [...]
• Purple Cow? Learn the weird reason blurbs are called blurbs
• ?January 21, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?76 Comments
• You read the blurb on the back of a book to figure out if you want to shell out the extra bucks for the hardcover. You glance at the blurb on a DVD before deciding if that film is the one to enjoy that evening. A good blurb provides a short summary or praise of a [...]
• American "Idol?" Hmm . . . Learn why the traditional definition of “idol” is offensive to some religions
• ?January 19, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?137 Comments
• When most of us hear the word “idol,” in our mind’s eye we see a triumphant David Cook or Carrie Underwood belting their hearts out. And while the “idol” in “American Idol,” has connotations of success and inspiration, the dictionary tells us that the meaning of the word is more complicated.
• Tetris is fun, but what does the video game’s name mean?
• ?January 19, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?40 Comments
• For over two decades, the puzzle video game Tetris has provided countless hours of procrastination and enjoyment for players all over the globe. But now, researchers believe that Tetris might have a new purpose. They think that the game may help to prevent the flashbacks that occur in the early stages of post-traumatic stress disorder. [...]



• How did the Yellow, Red and Black Seas get their names? And what is the fourth sea named after a color?
• ?January 16, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language ?67 Comments
• The Yellow Sea, situated between China and the Korean Peninsula, has been in the news lately due to the tensions between North and South Korea. Several major Chinese rivers that contain golden-hued silt empty into the sea. This silt alters the color of the water. (What are North and South Korea’s real names? Read about [...]
• “Sir” and “madam” are shorter versions of what older, fancier terms?
• ?January 15, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?48 Comments
• Let’s say you want to get the attention of a male clerk in the produce section of the grocery store. Would you say, “Excuse me sire, but could you please explain the difference between a yam and a sweet potato?” (For the answer to that question, read this.) Addressing a stranger as “sire” might raise [...]
• Did your horoscope sign change? Regardless, learn what the words for the zodiac signs literally mean.
• ?January 14, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, Language ?87 Comments
• Suddenly, a zinger about the zodiac seems to be everywhere online. If you haven’t heard, the Minnesota Planetarium Society has pointed out that the dates associated with horoscopes have been incorrect for a very, very long time. This means that the astrological sign you have always associated with yourself may be wrong. We discuss the [...]
• “Possum” and “opossum” is one correct? The tricky answer may surprise you
• ?January 13, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language ?60 Comments
• The most famous marsupial of the moment is Heidi, the goofy, cross-eyed opossum from Germany. Heidi has made headlines across the globe and apparently has over 111,000 fans on Facebook. Enough with the cuteness, and on to a great story of language: What is the difference between “possum” and “opossum?” Is one correct? The answer [...]
• leet, leetspeak, 1337
• What Is Leetspeak?
• ?January 8, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, computers ?348 Comments
• You’re texting, or reading comments on a blog. Suddenly your eyes go bananas. Someone has used a combination of strange numbers and symbols to spell out words, but in an awkward, semi-coherent manner. This bizarre take on the English alphabet began in the early days of the Internet and jumped over to the world of [...]
• Jack and Jill, the beanstalk, the candlestick. What is the meaning behind "Jack" in every fairy tale?
• ?January 7, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, reading ?84 Comments
• Since Jack went up the hill with Jill, Jack jumped over the candlestick, and climbed the beanstalk (to name just a few of his exploits,) he must be wiped out. Think about the classic fairy tales, folktales, and children’s stories. Doesn’t it seem like a disproportionate number of them contain a hero named Jack? Is [...]
• Are birds falling from the sky examples of pareidolia, eschatology, or something else?
• ?January 6, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?215 Comments
• The first story of 2011 to grab the attention of just about everybody is shocking and mysterious. On New Year’s Day, residents of Beebe, Arkansas found thousands of dead blackbirds in the street. Days later, Louisiana residents discovered hundreds more deceased birds. Each event in isolation was disturbing enough, but with such proximity, it has [...]
• What is the literal meaning of “eleven?”
• ?January 4, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?104 Comments
• What does the number eleven mean? And what unusual words and expressions incorporate eleven? The word derives from the Old English endleofan, which means
• Where did the strange expression “hair of the dog” come from?
• ?January 1, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?27 Comments
• If you woke up on New Year’s Day feeling as if you had been hit by a truck, you may have sought a hangover remedy with an infamously odd name: the hair of the dog. A morning drink may be the last thing you want after a night of boozing. But that’s exactly what this quirky English expression means. [...]
• The People's Choice Word of 2010 is . . . (It was almost a tie)
• ?January 1, 2011 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?101 Comments
• If you had any doubt that 2010 was a complicated year, consider this: the five finalists for our People’s Choice Word of the Year were all fairly close contenders, and three of the words were multisyllabic mouthfuls. The top two entries were incredibly close - out of over 10,000 votes, the winner was only 40 [...]
• Where does the name “Champagne” come from? Plus, why it’s called “the devil’s wine”?
• ?December 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?69 Comments
• Champagne has been associated with luxury, special occasions, and rites of passage since the days of French royalty when kings were anointed with bubbly. Where did this festive libation get its name? Champagne is a sparkling wine made from three types of grapes:
• What bizarre error gave California its name?
• ?December 27, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, Language ?161 Comments
• When the Spanish first began exploring the Pacific Coast of North America, they mistakenly believed that California was an island. (Some of the earliest and most fascinating maps of the state depict it as separated from the mainland.) This is considered one of the greatest, albeit short-lived, cartographic errors. Early mapmakers began labeling the “island” [...]
• Did Adam and Eve bite into a forbidden "apple," or a different fruit? (A lesson in meaning)
• ?December 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?209 Comments
• In one of the most famous culinary moments ever written down, Eve convinces Adam to share an apple with her in the Garden of Eden. Right? Well, not exactly. Adam and Eve did bite into a fruit. But the Book of Genesis does not explicitly say which fruit. It could have been an apple. Or, [...]
• What is the "nog" in eggnog? Well . . .
• ?December 25, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?13 Comments
• Frothy, creamy eggnog is a favorite beverage this time of year. Flavored with cinnamon or nutmeg, this winter drink is made with milk, sugar, and eggs. Usually an alcohol, like rum, is added. The “egg” in eggnog is obvious, but you may not know that a different word almost beat out “egg” to mean the [...]
• What do the Z, I, and P in “ZIP code” stand for? And what do the numbers represent?
• ?December 17, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?20 Comments
• It’s a hectic time of year for the U.S. Postal Service. Those packages you ordered on Cyber Monday are steadily arriving. You’re probably even receiving a few holiday greetings the old-fashioned way — snail mail. The half million employees who work for the USPS rely heavily on the five- or nine-digit ZIP codes for efficient [...]
• The most unusual celebrity name? What does “Gwyneth” mean, and what language is it?
• ?December 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?37 Comments
• Hollywood starlet and Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow is being honored with a star along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The actress is also the first to have the words on her star receive a thorough spellchecking. One reason: to avoid another misspelling scandal like the one surrounding the star of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. (Why is it called [...]
• What are the three places that form the Bermuda Triangle?
• ?December 12, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?43 Comments
• In March 1918, a U.S. Navy ship with a crew of 309 departed Barbados and was never seen again. Did the ship capsize? Is there a supernatural explanation? The area in which the ship disappeared is the infamous Bermuda Triangle. Also known as the Devil’s Triangle, it is a heavily traveled shipping lane in the [...]
• Where did UGG boots get their name? Is the name really short for “ugh?”
• ?December 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?87 Comments
• The unisex sheepskin and fleece footware called UGG boots, or simply uggs, gained popularity in the 1960s when competitive surfers began wearing them. They were the perfect remedy for cold, numb, wet feet. Now, everyone seems to be sporting the boots, from Hollywood celebrities and their tween followers to suburban moms. Originally of simple design, [...]
• One, easy language for the whole world? Meet the man who tried to make it happen.
• ?December 10, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?112 Comments
• If humankind can create airplanes, cellphones, and penicilin, surely we can tackle the hassle of language. Why doesn’t some brainiac come up with the perfect language that everyone can learn? Before you get all riled up, be assured this question is rhetorical. To start, this is not a new idea. In the late nineteenth century, [...]
• What is the “amber” in AMBER Alert? Plus, the origin of “kidnap”
• ?December 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, Language ?44 Comments
• The media is filled with reports of missing children. The term “AMBER Alert” has become synonymous with these tragedies, but the story behind the name “Amber” is worth repeating. First, the basics. In the suspected kidnapping of a child, an AMBER Alert is issued. This urgent bulletin is voluntarily issued through several
• Yesterday, President Obama mentioned a “holy grail.” What does it mean exactly?
• ?December 8, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?81 Comments
• In a speech yesterday, President Obama called tax cuts for the wealthy the Republicans’ “Holy Grail.” The term is so rich in myth and history that we can’t resist the opportunity for elucidation. For the record, the President was using the term “Holy Grail” informally and figuratively. In his quote, the reference implies “any greatly [...]
• irony, ironic
• Is Ironic the Most Abused Word in English?
• ?December 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?1,153 Comments
• “That is sooooo ironic.” This sentence is used frequently — and usually incorrectly — in American English. Often the word “ironic” is misused to remark on a coincidence, such as “This is the third time today we’ve run into each other. How ironic.” It is also mistakenly used to describe something out of the
• Meet the new hottest chili pepper, the “Naga Viper” What is the deadly meaning of this name?
• ?December 4, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?72 Comments
• Teary eyes? Burning throat? Is this how you respond if there’s a little too much jalapeno in your salsa? Then you better steer clear of the Naga Viper, the new record holder for the spiciest chili pepper in the world. The farmer who is responsible for the pepper says that eating it is dangerous — and [...]
• What is the medical term for people who shop too much? (Not “shopaholic”)
• ?December 3, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?68 Comments
• ‘Tis the season for family reunions, champagne toasts, and, of course, shopping. It’s likely that you know someone who you consider a shopaholic. Perhaps you think that she has a superhuman stamina for long lines, crowded malls, and late night purchasing. Or perhaps you think he just doesn’t know when to quit, spending way past [...]
• What do the letters in “AIDS” and “HIV” stand for?
• ?December 1, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Science ?40 Comments
• Wednesday marked the 23rd commemoration of Worlds AIDS Day. AIDS is one of the most devastating pandemics ever recorded. Since 1981, AIDS has killed more than 25 million people. And, it’s estimated that 33.4 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. But what do AIDS and HIV actually mean? How are they related to each other, and
• The most beautiful-sounding word in English, according to 100s of our users, is . . .
• ?November 29, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?1,852 Comments
• About two weeks ago we shared the fact that many language experts believe “cellar door” is the most euphonious phrase in the English language. More than 400 people replied to our post with strong opinions about the “cellar door” selection. If you would like to know the rationale behind the choice, you can read about [...]
• “Cyber Monday”: Learn what “cyber” meant before computers, and read the first sentence to use the phrase “cyberspace”
• ?November 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, Current Events, etymology ?38 Comments
• The term “Cyber Monday” was first used as part of a marketing strategy in 2005 to refer to the Monday following "Black Friday". (Why is the popular sales day called "Black Friday" when "Black Monday" refers to a day of financial devastation? Read about that here.) The prefix “cyber” means “computer,” “computer
• Glow-in the-dark squid? Plus, what’s the amazing, vicious difference between squid and octopi?
• ?November 27, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, Language ?69 Comments
• On a recent expedition to explore the seamounts in the southern Indian Ocean by scientists, a new species of large squid was discovered. A specimen of the new species, which can grow up to 30 inches long, belongs to the deep-sea Chiroteuthid family, which are known for being radically bioluminescent (naturally glowing.) Don’t confuse this squid [...]
• Is it naughty or not? Learn what “burlesque” actually means, plus Cher’s real name
• ?November 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?44 Comments
• The trailer for “Burlesque,” starring Cher and Christina Aguilera, makes the film seem like cheesy fun. What the preview fails to do, however, is explain what actually defines burlesque. Is it strictly a type of dance performed in seedy venues, a fancy word for striptease? Luckily for word enthusiasts, “burlesque” derives from a rich tradition as well as [...]
• What are the actual names of North and South Korea? Why do English speakers say “Korea” but Koreans don’t?
• ?November 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, In the News, naming ?83 Comments
• Tensions are high on the Korean Peninsula. The aggression by North Korea on the South has captured the world’s attention and raised a number of questions about Korea’s history, names, and geography. Prior to 1910, Korea was a kingdom. Then, from 1910 to 1945, the country was under Japanese rule. At the end of World War II, [...]
• “Muffliato!” Are the spells in Harry Potter real words? “Riddikulus!”
• ?November 20, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, hidden meaning ?147 Comments
• “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” is now in theaters. The newest movie in the series promises to be packed with magic spells. There are dozens of spells that are used by the characters in Harry Potter’s fictional world of wizardry. But are any of them real words? The names of many of [...]
• euphony
• What’s the Most Beautiful Word in English?
• ?November 18, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?922 Comments
• If someone asked you to name the most beautiful word or phrase in English, how would you choose? Would it be based on the meaning of the word? How it sounds? How it is spelled? There are some words, like “love,” “comely,” or “demure,” that seem like solid contenders. But the compound word that some [...]
• “Mohammed” is one of the top baby names in Britain. What is its precise definition?
• ?November 16, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, translation ?37 Comments
• For the last 14 years, Jack was the most common boy’s name in England and Wales. Last year, though, Oliver overtook Jack to take the top spot. There’s a more interesting story, though, in the statistics: over 7,000 newborn boys in Britain were given one of 12 variations of the name Mohammed, such as Muhammad [...]
• Does the story behind the word “hip-hop” go back to the nineteenth century?
• ?November 14, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?72 Comments
• Thirty-two years ago, Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins, who was a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, was teasing a friend. The friend had just signed up to serve in the U.S. Army. Cowboy was mimicking the rhythm of marching soldiers by scat singing “hip hop hip hop.” He later used the phrase in a [...]
• There really is a 13th zodiac sign named “Ophiuchus” that you’ve probably never heard of.
• ?November 13, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?131 Comments
• Whether or not you believe that the position and relationship of the sun, moon, stars, and planets has any bearing on your personality, you probably still know what your astrological sign is. The zodiac contains twelve constellations and is divided into twelve equal segments. Each astrological sign represents one of the segments. The signs are [...]
• What the “x” in “Xbox” stands for, plus when did “x” start to mean “the unknown?”
• ?November 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, hidden meaning ?106 Comments
• No letter in the English language gets around like X. The 24th letter of the alphabet shows up everywhere, from the popular Xbox to standing in for a signature on legal documents. It represents a chromosome, signifies the multiplication process, and marks “the spot” on treasure maps. Let’s explore just a few of the uses of [...]
• “Jitterbug” is a fun dance with a horrible origin. And what classic dance was once considered “indecent?”
• ?November 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, History ?26 Comments
• Tonight the stars will boogie again, getting one step closer to the championship on “Dancing with the Stars.” Will tonight’s show feature the rumba? The cha-cha? The jive? We’re less interested in which dances we’ll see tonight and more intrigued with how the dances got their names. As you may suspect, the term “ballroom dancing” [...]
• Who is the “Granny Smith” of Granny Smith apples? Plus, learn the truth about Fuji apples
• ?November 8, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming ?53 Comments
• Many parts of the U.S. are enjoying the peak of apple season right now. And lucky for logophiles, the names of some of the most popular varieties are almost as interesting as the fruit is tasty. There are more than 7, 500 cultivars of apples. Here are the stories behind five of the most popular: • It’s understandable if [...]
• What is it called when you can “taste” a word or “see” a sound?
• ?November 7, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language, Science ?87 Comments
• Every so often, an oddball phrase or sentence trends on Google search, such as: “Can blind people see the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?” This is a fascinating, serious question disguised in buffoonery. A more apropos question seems to be: Is it possible to “see” the taste of a cereal? Or better yet: Is it possible [...]
• Clock confusion: Which is correct, daylight “saving” or daylight “savings” time?
• ?November 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, hidden meaning ?51 Comments
• Most Americans are turning their clocks back one hour, a sure sign that the long days of summer are far behind us. Speaking of the seasons: Did autumn officially begin with Labor Day? Find out here. This practice of advancing the clocks ahead an hour in the spring and
• What’s the exact difference between being “charged,” “convicted” and “sentenced” for a crime?
• ?November 5, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?20 Comments
• Today, former Oakland, California, transit police officer Johannes Mehserle received the minimum possible sentence in the controversial death of a teenager on January 1, 2009. The incident and subsequent trial have prompted outrage and violent protests. Today’s decision brings attention to the legal meanings of three verbs : “charge,” “convict,” and “sentence.” They appear in the news constantly, but [...]
• A new Dr. Seuss book is found. What new Seuss word is discovered inside?
• ?November 4, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: reading ?107 Comments
• Theodore Geisel, under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, wrote 44 children’s books that are as loved by young readers as they are by adults. Delight filled the Dictionary.com office when we learned an unpublished Seuss manuscript has turned up, containing a hitherto unknown “Seussism.” Some of his playful language creations, or neologisms, have become ubiquitous, such as ”biggered,” the word [...]
• The Giants won the World Series, but which giants were ginormous snake monsters with six arms?
• ?November 3, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?42 Comments
• San Francisco is whooping it up for the Giants, with a boisterous victory parade. The World Series win is impressive, but stop for a second; the mythic creatures who inspired the very word “giant” had a contest of their own that might embarrass the baseball champions. Before we journey into “Clash of the Titans” territory, here’s how [...]
• What is the “seven” in “7 UP?” What is the “root” in “root beer?”
• ?November 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming ?53 Comments
• Root beer and 7 Up are carbonated, sweetened beverages with peculiar names. What root is found in root beer? Burdock? Daikon? And what does the “7” represent? Good luck? The primary flavor of root beer was originally made using the root (or
• What does something “musty” literally smell like? Why stinky words are more mysterious
• ?November 1, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?32 Comments
• The common cholesterol drug Lipitor was recently subject to a recall due to reports from consumers about a “musty” odor associated with the bottles. We aren’t interested in the drug — this post concerns stink, stench, aroma. Smell may be the hardest sense to describe in words, which is why we are eager to take [...]
• “Trick or treating” owes its existence to “souling” and “guising.” What do they mean?
• ?October 29, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, hidden meaning ?35 Comments
• It’s one of a kid’s favorite parts of Halloween. There’s no feeling quite like waiting for a stranger to open his or her door so you can scream the words “trick or treat.” But why do we say it? What does it actually mean? The practice of donning a costume and asking for treats from your [...]
• The meaning of “een” in Halloween may trick, not treat, you
• ?October 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?82 Comments
• Halloween has its roots in two celebrations: the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saint’s Day. The spooky festival’s name, however, comes from only one. Samhain is Gaelic for “summer’s end,” and marks what has loosely been labeled the “Celtic New Year.” The end of the “lighter half” of the year and the beginning of [...]
• What’s the word to describe if you’re not a twin (born solo)?
• ?October 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?63 Comments
• Celine Dion is now the proud momma of twin boys. We’re happy for the entertainment diva, and pleased at the excuse to explore the language of twins. Dion’s boys are not identical twins. They’re fraternal. This means that they derived from separately fertilized ova and that they have different genetic makeup. Fraternal twins may be [...]
• What exactly does the “Illuminati” mean?
• ?October 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, Language ?232 Comments
• Rap impresario Kanye West has been hard at work not only quashing rumors that he practices devil worship, but that he is part of the notorious “Illuminati.” The gossip began after the release of his new short film “Runaway,” which contains references to the elusive organization. West recently expressed confusion about the Illuminati. Is it [...]
• Why is Jane Austen guilty of “cacography?” (Are you guilty, too?)
• ?October 25, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, reading ?68 Comments
• Jane Austen is known for her clean and eloquent prose. But new scholarly work shows that the great novelist’s editor likely played a bigger role in Austen’s literary pursuits than previously thought. (By the way, do you know what language the word novel comes from? Find out here.) In fact, it seems that Austen may have been guilty [...]
• What poetic term describes living your life while accepting that it is filled with uncertainty?
• ?October 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, reading ?55 Comments
• On December 21, 1817, the poet John Keats wrote a letter to his brother in which he expressed and named a quality of human existence that is tricky to articulate. Keats’ formulation has been adopted by philosophers, poets, and others ever since. Roughly, the idea is our ability to simultaneously acknowledge the unpredictable nature of events and conduct ourselves with [...]
• What’s the name of the food causing a minor crisis in South Korea?
• ?October 22, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, Language ?44 Comments
• Koreans eat it with almost every meal. When the country’s first astronauts went into space, portions of this food went with them. Each year, South Koreans consume more than two million tons of it. Now, because of abnormal fall weather, there is a shortage, driving the country into crisis.
• Does “right” actually mean “right?” Does that mean “left” means “wrong?”
• ?October 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?64 Comments
• Little kids often get confused regarding the fact that “right” refers to a certain direction and also what is good, proper, and just. After all, “left” doesn’t mean wrong ? right? Well, not exactly. “Left” comes from the Old English lyft, which means “weak, idle,
• Why is “dog” one of the great mysteries of the English language?
• ?October 19, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, hidden meaning ?72 Comments
• Behind the simplest words one can often find the most compelling questions. Take for example, “dog.” Canis familiaris, also known as “dog,” is essentially a domesticated wolf. The dog is a member of the Canidae family, like the jackal and the fox. About seven centuries ago, the word “hound,” which came from the Old
• “Harry Potter” author may face plagiarism trial. What is the precise meaning of plagiarism?
• ?October 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?193 Comments
• This week a British judge refused to dismiss a plagiarism lawsuit against best-selling author J.K. Rowling. The claims against the wildly successful creator of “Harry Potter” say that she stole ideas from an obscure fantasy book. The judge said that a proper hearing should be held to consider the matter. Is plagiarism simply copying words? [...]
• Scientists discover a fish they name “dracula.” What’s the origin of the word, and does the fish sleep in a coffin?
• ?October 13, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, naming, reading ?115 Comments
• Scientists recently released a list of new species that were discovered in the Greater Mekong Region, which comprises parts of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China. One of the more peculiar species on the list is a translucent fish that scientists call “dracula.” The fish actually was first found in 2009, in a fish [...]
• The “Taser” is a serious weapon, but what the name stands for may puzzle you
• ?October 12, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology, hidden meaning ?98 Comments
• The electroshock weapon called the Taser, which is typically used by police when trying to control a fleeing suspect, uses an electrical current that causes neuromuscular incapacitation. In other words, if you’re struck by a Taser, your chances of getting away are null. There have been plenty of controversies involving the device and law enforcement. [...]
• Want to meet two extinct letters of the alphabet? Learn what “thorn” and “wynn” sounded like
• ?October 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet ?165 Comments
• The English alphabet, as you likely know, is made up of 26 letters. But it wasn’t always that way. Before we get to which letters were late additions, let’s explain a bit about Old English. English was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, also known as Anglo-Saxon. The Angles and Saxons
• Columbus’ first name isn’t really Christopher. What is it?
• ?October 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, History ?112 Comments
• Today is Columbus Day, which marks what is arguably the first landing of a European in the “New World.” On October 12, 1492, an ambitious seaman sailed into the West Indies, and the rest, as they say, is history. The West Indies is a region of more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays in [...]
• Who is the “Nobel” in “Nobel Prize” and what does he have to do with explosions?
• ?October 7, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?30 Comments
• Each year in October, the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm announces what has become a sort of gold medal for science, literature, and politics. This year’s laureates include Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa in literature and Robert G. Edwards, father of the test tube baby, in medicine. Winners receive a sum usually worth millions of dollars in [...]
• An unknown language was recently discovered ? what’s its name and where was it found?
• ?October 7, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, Language ?45 Comments
• Arunachal Pradesh is a state in the far northeast corner of India. It shares a border with Burma, Bhutan, and China. In the state there’s a district called East Kameng, a community of villages that have had few interactions with the outside world. And in that community, there are several thousand people who speak a [...]
• How are “scum,” “sludge,” “slush,” “slime,” “ooze,” “muck,” “mire,” “goo” and “gunk” different?
• ?October 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, In the News, Language ?40 Comments
• Toxic red sludge poured into a Hungarian village this week after a dam containing the chemical residue from an aluminum plant burst. At least four people were killed and dozens injured. The sludge continues to flow and threatens to contaminate the Danube River, one of Europe’s major waterways. This tragedy poses a linguistic puzzle that, hopefully, can [...]
• What exactly is Pig Latin, is it a language? And how is it a mystery?
• ?October 5, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?98 Comments
• What language do these words come from: ouch-cay, appy-hay, and ender-tay? If you guessed Pig Latin, you’re correct. Pig Latin is not actually a language but a language game that children (and some adults) use to speak “in code.” Pig Latin words are formed by altering words in English. Here’s how it works: First, pick [...]
• Why was the scary word “cataclysm” so popular on Google yesterday? What does it mean?
• ?October 5, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?21 Comments
• If a word like “cataclysm,” that basically means “a ginormous, Armageddon-style disaster” is all over the Web, you might feel a tad cantankerous, or at least concerned. Would it make you feel better to know that the news was greeted by thousands of geeks around the world with glee? Enough teasing — “Cataclysm” refers to [...]
• What’s the difference between green and black tea? And who is the “Earl” in “Earl Grey?”
• ?October 4, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Language ?35 Comments
• Whether you start your morning with coffee or tea — it’s part of who you are, but how much do you know about either caffeinated beverage? If you want to learn the mysterious origin of coffee’s name and more, click here. This is about the drink that comes from leaves, not beans. “Tea” comes from the [...]
• Does “KISS” stand for anything? And what does the Holocaust have to do with it?
• ?October 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?54 Comments
• The hard rock band KISS, known for their wild stage makeup and intense pyrotechnics, will not be inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame this year (for the 11th year in a row.) Fans insist this is a major diss, but critics who consider KISS a gimmick band (despite their 24 gold albums) [...]
• “Bigot” remarks get CNN reporter fired. What does “bigot” mean exactly? (Its origin involves cussing)
• ?October 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?15 Comments
• Every so often, surprises seem to pop out of the mouths of public figures like a Jack-in-the-Box. CNN reporter Rick Sanchez lost his job Friday for a few eyebrow-raising comments he made on the radio. Among other things, Sanchez called the comedian and political talk show host Jon Stewart a “bigot.” The specifics of the [...]
• Is Friday named after a beautiful goddess with a chariot pulled by cats? Well . . .
• ?September 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, etymology, hidden meaning ?97 Comments
• In a world that knows too many details about unimportant matters, one would think that our collective expertise could be certain about something as essential as the days of the week. There is, however, a scholarly debate regarding which goddess of love in Norse mythology is the namesake of “Friday.” To complicate matters, it may [...]
• Why is exciting planet discovery called “Goldilocks,” and what is its actual name?
• ?September 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, space ?152 Comments
• This week, excitement was stoked by the discovery of a “Goldilocks planet” within our astronomical neighborhood. Located about 20 light years away in the constellation of Libra, the exoplanet in question has temperatures ranging from -25 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit , orbits its star from a distance of .146 Astronomical Units (about 14 million miles), and [...]
• What’s the difference between atheism and agnosticism?
• ?September 29, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?196 Comments
• A recent survey on religion caused a stir when it revealed that many Americans lack some basic knowledge about their own religious faiths. Another provocative finding indicated both atheists and agnostics are surprisingly knowledgable about a variety of religions. This prompts us to address a commonly-asked question: What is the difference between someone who defines [...]
• The TV show “Glee” is sassy, but what does the word “glee” have to do with squinting and schadenfreude?
• ?September 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, In the News ?22 Comments
• Cute teenagers, song and dance routines, even Britney Spears — this is “Glee’s” moment in the sun. We want to take this same moment to illuminate some of the unusual senses of “glee” (like what it has to do with schadenfreude.) Let’s begin with “Glee Club.” These infamously chipper singing groups are called “glee” because [...]
• What I.Q. defines a “genius?” What does the word actually mean?
• ?September 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, hidden meaning ?65 Comments
• The 2010 MacArthur “genius” fellowships were announced today, meaning 23 individuals just received $500,000 in recognition of their “making our world a better place.” The recipients, artists, scientists, and others, can do whatever they want with the cash. Every year when these fabulous funds are given out, people tend to ask: “What makes them so [...]
• Is “achoo” a word? And what’s the origin of saying “God bless you” after a sneeze?
• ?September 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?170 Comments
• Every sneeze has a different ring to it, but there are only a few words in English that name the sound. Achoo is the most favored. This instance of onomatopoeia imitates the sound of sneezing. The first syllable mimics the quick intake of breath, while
• A woman fights off a bear with a “courgette.” What is a courgette” and why is it funny?
• ?September 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, Language ?55 Comments
• According to the British tabloid the Daily Mirror, a quick-thinking Montana woman fended off a bear attack with a 14-inch courgette. Is this some sort of ax, shovel, or broom? No. Here’s a hint: a courgette is perfect sautéed in garlic and butter. If you are of British extraction, you may recognize the weapon of necessity [...]
• Why is bankruptcy called “chapter 11?” What about chapters 10 and 12?
• ?September 25, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?21 Comments
• You may have heard that Blockbuster filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The term chapter 11 is often used synonymously with bankruptcy. Chapter 11 and bankruptcy, however, aren’t exactly the same. Chapter 11 is a specific section of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. It permits the reorganization of
• Where does the “sesame” in “Sesame Street” come from?
• ?September 24, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology, reading ?85 Comments
• You may have heard that Katy Perry was booted off “Sesame Street” for a bustier deemed too bawdy for children. But this imbroglio isn’t what piques our interest. What we’re curious about is the famous name of the show. Does it have anything to do with the “sesame” that gives us the tiny seeds? The [...]
• If your last name ends in “-ez,” what does it mean? And what last name means “bold voyager?”
• ?September 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, naming ?234 Comments
• A few weeks back we asked readers to suggest last names to be explored and explained. The surnames with the most requests happened to end in -ez. We like to make you happy. First, we need to touch on how many names originating in Spain function. Most Hispanic surnames, including those that end in -ez, fall [...]
• Why “acne” comes from a mistake, and what do doctors call “pimples”?
• ?September 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, naming ?39 Comments
• A recent report about acne and depression inspired an exploration of the words associated with the inflammatory affliction. What is the medical name for acne? And how did the slang word “pimple” come about? Acne is a shortening of the medical term acne vulgaris, a chronic skin condition of the sebaceous glands that is common in
• Look at your keyboard ? What does QWERTY stand for? Is it a word?
• ?September 20, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, etymology ?161 Comments
• Most of us take our keyboards for granted. If we’re touch typists, we automatically position our fingers above the same eight keys and our muscle memory takes over. We just type! (What are those eight keys called? And what do they have to do with a popular Google search? Read about that here.) But our [...]
• Gosh, really? Learn the religious meaning of “golly,” “gosh” and “gee.”
• ?September 19, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, History ?74 Comments
• Gosh, golly, and gee casually express surprise or excitement, right? Actually, they have a more serious origin and purpose. While this folksy trio are informal interjections, they are also euphemistic alterations of the word “god” or, in the case of gee, “Jesus.” The use of gosh predates
• An “Asian unicorn?” What’s the real name of this rare creature that was recently captured?
• ?September 18, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, etymology, In the News ?22 Comments
• When one of the world’s rarest mammals makes an appearance, a number of equally exotic words tend to follow. This wild, extraordinary creature hasn’t been photographed since 1999. However, reports emerged this week that a small village in Laos captured one. Sadly, it died several days later. The “Asian unicorn” nickname isn’t exactly fitting since the [...]
• What does “pope” literally mean? And how does a pope choose his name?
• ?September 17, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, naming ?37 Comments
• As you read about the Pope’s visit to Britain, you may begin to wonder about his name. After all, what does “pope” actually mean? And how does a pope get his name after he assumes the papacy? The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, and thereby the world leader of the Catholic Church. The word [...]
• Why do you use No. 2 pencils for tests? Why not a No. 3, 4, or 5?
• ?September 16, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology, hidden meaning ?91 Comments
• This question will probably not be on your standardized test: Why are most pencils yellow? You won’t be able to answer that with a ballpoint pen, or a neon pink highlighter. Let’s start with the word “pencil.” It comes from a Latin word meaning “little tail.” The writing instrument is made up of a casing that [...]
• What exactly does “Tea Party” refer to, and what is “GOP” short for?
• ?September 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, In the News ?61 Comments
• After Tuesday’s primary victories by Tea Party movement-backed candidates, water cooler talk seems focused on the relationship between the political movement and the GOP. The future impact of one on the other is unknown yet intriguing; the origins and meaning of both terms are just as fascinating. The Republican Party picked up the “Grand Old Party” label [...]
• What do the two lines on the dollar sign mean? But wait, what other currency also uses the $
• ?September 14, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?94 Comments
• Check out the number four key on your keyboard. Stamped above it is one of the most powerful symbols in the world: the almighty dollar sign. But the symbol doesn’t just mark the U.S. currency. Originally — and to this day— the emblem also represents the peso. Several Spanish-speaking countries consider it their own. Peso literally means [...]
• What is it called when you say “um,” “eh,” or “well. . .” Are these considered words?
• ?September 13, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Grammar, Language ?110 Comments
• Have you ever had to listen to a recording of a conversation, or worse, had to transcribe one? You quickly learn that everyday speech isn’t exactly made of flowing repartee. Grunts, coughs, sighs ? they aren’t pleasant to listen back to, but these sounds are probably more common than the words between them. Remember that [...]
• Is she a “lady”? Is she “gaga”? Did Lady Gaga choose her name because of what it literally means?
• ?September 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, In the News ?95 Comments
• Her catchy tunes, epic videos, and bizarre outfits have made her the queen of pop — at least for now. Adding to her allure is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s strange, yet fitting, stage name. What does “Lady Gaga” mean? And why did Ms. Germanotta choose it? To start, a lady is technically a “woman whose manners and sensibilities [...]
• Why is New York City known as “the Big Apple” and “Gotham”?
• ?September 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?33 Comments
• New York City goes by many names, such as the “City that Never Sleeps” and the less humble “Center of the Universe.” But the Big Apple is the most kenspeckled. There are many rumors about the history of the nickname. Did the city used to be filled with apple orchards? Does the name originate with [...]
• Yes, a woman grew back her pinkie, but think ? why is it called a “pinkie?”
• ?September 10, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?41 Comments
• Why is the most diminutive digit on your hand not called a finger? Do the ring, index, and middle have their own, obscure names? Let us give you, ahem, a hand with these questions. The amazing story of Deepa Kulkarni of California sparked our curiosity about hands and fingers. She lost the tip of her [...]
• What does “Ramadan” mean exactly, and why is today so important to Muslims?
• ?September 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?24 Comments
• After a long period of fasting, today marks Eid al-Fitr, the final day of the month of Ramadan. Muslims around the world will mark the occasion with a day of feasting. During Ramadan, Muslims honor the time when they believe God revealed the



• Risqué Natalie Portman film “Black Swan” gets hype, but what “swan” does the title refer to?
• ?September 8, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, Language ?29 Comments
• Every so often, a film picks up buzz before its release. Rumors of Natalie Portman engaging in lewd behavior and painted in flamboyant makeup have propelled the new picture “Black Swan” into gossip territory. Internet searches reveal that people want to know about the title as well as the purportedly licentious scenes involving Ms. Portman’s character. Beyond the [...]
• What does “Rosh Hashana” literally mean, and what does it celebrate?
• ?September 8, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, etymology ?32 Comments
• At sunset today, families and friends will gather to pray and then eat the traditional honey and apples, which symbolizes the hope for a sweet new year. Today is Rosh Hashana, the day that marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashana comes from Hebrew and simply means “beginning of the year.”



• What is the medical term for having déjà vu? (And what is the opposite sensation called?)
• ?September 5, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Science, translation ?37 Comments
• Déjà vu is that spooky feeling in which you feel like you have previously experienced something that is actually being encountered for the first time. In French, the term literally means “already seen.” Déjà vu is often
• A Quarterback Is a Quarter of What Exactly?
• ?September 4, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?55 Comments
• See if your football fanatic friends can explain the meaning and history behind these common football words. Let’s start with the most confusing term in the game: touchdown. The football does not need to touch the ground in order to score, and for most of the game the last thing a player wants is for [...]
• What do the words “Barack” and “Obama” literally mean?
• ?September 3, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, In the News ?52 Comments
• We recently asked readers to suggest a name for us to research and write about. The name that received the most requests happens to belong to Barack Obama. The 44th President of the United States is named after his father, who was a Kenyan economist. Barack is an African name meaning
• Right now, the Web is abuzz about the arrest of rapper ”T.I.” What do the “T” & “I” stand for? (The answer is odd)
• ?September 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?51 Comments
• Lots of celebrities use odd names. Snooki? Lady Gaga? (Find out if the word Snooki actually means anything, here.) The arrest of popular hip-hop star T.I. turns the spotlight on his unique name, which we consider far more fascinating than 99% of the funny things pop stars choose to call themselves. Why do we find [...]
• The new iPod nano is nifty, but what precisely does “nano” mean?
• ?September 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, etymology, In the News ?13 Comments
• People love to understand the significance behind the names of the products they use. Apple fans seem to be more curious than most. (For example, don’t you want to know what the “I” in “iPad” stands for? (Click here for the answer.) This week, Steve Jobs announced a makeover for the iPod nano. You’re probably [...]
• Category 1 hurricane? Category 5? What do the numbers really mean?
• ?September 1, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, naming, Science ?30 Comments
• All eyes are on the movements of Earl and Fiona. What category will the hurricanes be when they hit land? What kind of damage might they inflict? (And by the way, who picked the names Earl and Fiona? Read about it here.) Part of the drama of hurricane season revolves around the predicting
• Million-dollar hair? OK, sure — but what do you call the biggest numbers in existence?
• ?August 31, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, Science ?24 Comments
• You’ve probably heard about the football player Troy Polamalu whose long locks are, as of today, insured for $1,000,000 dollars. The silly stunt is just the chance we need to talk big — bigger than a million. How big? Let’s see how big. A “million” is literally Latin for “a great thousand” (mille is “thousand,” [...]
• That’s “baloney!” Or is it “bologna?” What’s the difference? (One has to do with a legendary politician)
• ?August 31, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?13 Comments
• Thinly dressed with yellow mustard and slapped between two slices of white bread, bologna is found in the lunchboxes of many American youth. But what does the cold cut have to do with baloney, a slang word that implies nonsense? The bologna sausage is traditionally made from the “odds and ends” of chicken, turkey, beef, [...]
• Is there a connection between Snoopy and Snoop Dogg? Also, what was Snoopy almost called instead?
• ?August 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, naming ?25 Comments
• Before he was Snoop Dogg, the West Coast rap icon went by his given name: Cordozar Calvin Broadus. He was named after his stepfather. His stage name was inspired by Snoopy, a childhood nickname. His parents gave him the pet name because of the way he looked. (By the way, the word “nickname” comes from ekename, [...]
• Hurricane “Earl?” Hurricane “Katrina?” Who picks storm names, and what’s next on the list?
• ?August 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, naming, Science ?16 Comments
• Nobody can tell you how serious Hurricane Earl might be, but we can tell you why Earl has that name. (A pretty friendly name for such a potential disaster.) Briefly, here’s how the monikers for storms are picked. The world is roughly divided into six major basins where storm activity occurs. Each basin has an organization [...]
• Who is the “Tom” in “tomcat,” the name for male cats? Plus, you have a pack of dogs, but a “what” of cats?
• ?August 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, naming ?142 Comments
• Ailurophiles (cat fanciers) will tell you that it makes perfect sense female cats are called queens. “Tomcat,” however, is a little trickier. While we’re on the feline topic, what is the name for a group of cats, and where does the myth of cats’ nine lives originate? Meow. (What do people in Japan say instead of ”meow?” Here’s [...]
• The “Emmy” of Emmy Awards isn’t a woman, or even human. What is it?
• ?August 29, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning ?18 Comments
• The trophies from the big award shows all have cute little names (Oscar), and the Emmys ceremony is getting all the attention. Emmy must be very excited, right? Some Emily who was so important to the TV industry that an honor was named after her? Nope. Emmy isn’t human, is a feminization, and is totally [...]
• What does “sophomore” mean exactly, and can it be an insult?
• ?August 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, etymology ?35 Comments
• Let’s play a game. Call out when we get to a word whose origin isn’t immediately obvious. Ready? Junior. Senior. Freshman. Sophomore. Huh? In school, the place where you are most expected to know the how and why of everything, it’s funny that second-year students are called by a term whose roots are abstruse. Then [...]
• Why are planes named after numbers, like the 747? Is there a 947 or a 658?
• ?August 27, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?33 Comments
• After World War II, one of the largest aircraft manufacturers, Boeing, turned its attention from designing military craft to building commercial planes, along with missiles and spaceships. (Unrelated fact: when Boeing was forced to spin off its passenger flight division, the newly-formed company became United Airlines. Back to the late 1940s: Model numbers were assigned [...]
• Beware Friday’s hoax about the moon and Mars. Plus, are you sure you know why Mars is named “Mars?”
• ?August 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, space ?46 Comments
• There’s an email going around that claims on Friday night, the sky will look as though there are two big moons. Allegedly, Mars will be so large that it will rival Luna (the official name of our lovely moon.) Here’s the problem: this email has been circulating since 2003. In reality, on Friday the red planet will [...]
• When stocks go up or down, what exactly do people mean by “the Dow?”
• ?August 25, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, In the News ?6 Comments
• When someone casually uses a term they assume you understand but don’t, you have a few choices. You can get frustrated, or you can look it up. Financial jargon can be a code of confusing abbreviations and arithmetic. Let’s focus on one of the most common bits of shorthand: “the Dow.” The full name for this measure [...]
• Afghanistan, Kazakhstan — How many “stans” are there and what does it mean?
• ?August 24, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, In the News, naming, translation ?82 Comments
• Pakistan, the site of so much suffering lately, means “land of the pure” in Urdu and Persian. Part of this meaning is also found in the names Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. What is it? If you guessed the meaning of the suffix -stan, you’re correct. The suffix -stan is Persian and Urdu for “place of,” [...]
• Today is a big day for “Virgos.” What exactly do “Virgo” and “zodiac” mean?
• ?August 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning ?32 Comments
• If you read your horoscope, you probably know that today is special according to the zodiac. But honestly, do you know what all the terms of astrology refer to? As an exercise in clarity, let’s explore the precise sense of the mystical-sounding phrase “the sun is in Virgo.” The zodiac is, officially, “an imaginary belt of [...]
• Ouch. What do “rhabdomyolysis” and “compartment syndrome” mean and why are they the talk of football?
• ?August 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, Science ?8 Comments
• Nineteen Oregon high school football players required medical attention this past week after complaining of intense muscle soreness. Three of the players required surgery after they were diagnosed with compartment syndrome, which is about as close to a physical nightmare as we can imagine. The condition results “from the expansion or overgrowth of enclosed tissue [...]
• You may already know what the last name “Smith” means but what about, say, “Garcia” or “Miller?”
• ?August 22, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?120 Comments
• In the 1990 and 2000 Census results, Smith was the most popular last name in the United States. Maybe your last name is Smith, or Garcia or Miller: do you know the meaning and the history of this part of you that you write and say daily? Surname means “the name that a person has in common with other family [...]
• “Denim” and “jeans” are originally names of two cities. And are “pants” really named after a clown?
• ?August 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, naming ?42 Comments
• Whether they are skinny, boot-legged, or low-rise, most Americans have at least one pair that we couldn’t live without. Jeans are as American as apple pie, right? In fact, the word “jean” comes from the French jean fustian. Fustian is a type
• Why is it called “adultery” when being unfaithful isn’t a particularly “adult” thing to do?
• ?August 20, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?45 Comments
• A celebrity marriage mystery has raised some very grown-up questions about the words we use to talk about love, commitment and desire. Gossip-mongers have been transfixed the past few days by the curious romantic situation of three TV stars: Elisabeth Moss of “Mad Men” wed Fred Armisen of “Saturday Night Live” (the guy who plays [...]
• What we call an “egg” almost had a different name. What was it, and why?
• ?August 19, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?53 Comments
• Like it or not, you probably have eggs on the brain. The massive recall of shell eggs is growing, along with reported cases of salmonella food poisoning. Learn the symptoms of salmonella and why it shares its name with salmon, right here. While digging into the facts behind this scary situation, we found a story [...]
• Oops — you’ve made a Freudian slip. What’s the technical term for a slip of the tongue?
• ?August 17, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Language ?127 Comments
• It’s one thing to make a typo on your resume, but we know of a worse kind of mistake: calling your boy or girlfriend the name of a previous paramour. Or perhaps you’re talking to your boss and out of your mouth pops an obscene word that rhymes with what you meant to say. These [...]
• What is the exact meaning of “mosque” (and “temple” and “church” while we’re at it)?
• ?August 16, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, In the News ?178 Comments
• Debate is easy, and yelling is easier. How often, however, do people examine their most basic knowledge? Right now, the proposed construction of an Islamic worship center in relative proximity to “Ground Zero” in Manhattan is a nexus of conflict and emotion. The missing ingredient is definition. Let’s examine basic terms, starting with mosque.
• Forget about TV’s “Snooki.” A “snook” can be delicious or offensive, but first you need to know what it means.
• ?August 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?19 Comments
• Does the quasi-actress Snooki ever get called “snookums” at the snooker table by an ichthyologist who studies snook? Let’s unpack this ludicrous question and find out. You see, Nicole Polizzi, better known as Snooki on the reality TV show “Jersey Shore,” recently faced rejection of the semantic kind. The United
• Is it true that “goodbye” is actually short for a religious phrase?
• ?August 10, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Grammar ?67 Comments
• Of the many ways to say farewell — peace, so long, later skater, ciao — goodbye is the most common. A form of good-bye has been spoken since the sixteenth century. It comes
• Danger! What is the frantic origin of “hello?” (And the source of “hi” may surprise you)
• ?August 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Grammar ?128 Comments
• We use hello several times a day to greet people or attract attention. But as prevalent as the word is, “hello” is relatively new. Hello came into existence in the mid-1800s. It is an alteration of hallo, which was an alteration of holla or hollo. These words were used to attract
• OK, “ice cream” is obvious, but the word “yogurt” was created by a misunderstanding. Get the scoop
• ?August 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, naming ?37 Comments
• Double or single scoop? Cone or cup? However you take it, all frozen desserts have one thing in common. Nothing tastes better on a summer afternoon than an ice-cold, sweet treat. Frozen yogurt is fairly new to the world of sweets. It was introduced in the 1970s under the name Frogurt, and in the 1980s sales [...]
• Meet a word whose history really is a mystery — “pundit”
• ?August 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?41 Comments
• These days you can’t turn on the television without being bombarded by panels of pundits spewing their two cents. If there were a prize for the term whose contemporary meaning is the furthest from its origin, “pundit” would be a contender. When we talk about a pundit, we are referring to someone who comments or opines [...]
• You don’t like “jerks” or a person who’s “chicken,” so why is something so delicious called “jerk chicken?”
• ?August 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming ?6 Comments
• Yum. Jerk sauce, which is commonly used to marinate chicken and pork, contains a spicy seasoning mixture that is flavored with allspice. It is used in Jamaican cooking. And on grills all summer long. First of all, jerk chicken is different from jerky, a favorite convenience store snack. Jerky is
• If you see an odd glow in the sky tonight, here’s what it’s called and its cause
• ?August 4, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, naming, space ?68 Comments
• You’ve heard of the northern lights? The next few days you may be able to see lights even if you aren’t that far north. The sun erupted on Sunday, spewing plasma, “a highly ionized gas containing an approximately equal number of positive ions and electrons” right in our direction. There’s no reason to freak out; solar [...]
• Relax, Bill Cosby isn’t dead — it was a hoax. Is it true that the origin of ”hoax” mocks Christianity?
• ?August 3, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?57 Comments
• They are the acne of the Web, stupid rumors about celebrities. Justin Bieber and Britney Spears are frequent targets, and yesterday, the venerable Bill Cosby actually had to appear online and on TV to quash the frothing gossip that, well, he was dead. As Mark Twain said, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Bigfoot and [...]
• Actually, the “mad” in the TV show “Mad Men” isn’t short for madness, so what does it mean?
• ?August 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, In the News ?29 Comments
• Are you ready to have an aha moment? “Mad Men” has more sin and angst than your average pop culture sensation, but the show’s characters hardly meet the definition of insanity. This “mad” doesn’t refer to a bunch of pissed off guys in natty retro attire, either. “Mad men” is a historical term short for “Madison Avenue” men, coined [...]
• Who is the overachiever that August is named for, and what was the month’s incredibly boring old name?
• ?August 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology ?75 Comments
• August has arrived. If you’re in Europe, it’s likely you’re taking an extended holiday. If you’re anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, you might just be trying to stay cool. August is the eighth month of the Gregorian calendar, and the sixth month of the Roman calendar. Its original name was Sextilus, Latin for “sixth month.” [...]
• What do “corny” and “corned beef” have to do with plain-old “corn?”
• ?July 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?22 Comments
• The grain called corn that is grown in the U.S. is Indian corn or maize. It has been cultivated for long before the first Europeans arrived and is now grown in The Corn Belt. But corn also refers any leading cereal crop, such as wheat is England or oats in Scotland and Ireland. The uses [...]
• Is Friday named after a beautiful goddess with a chariot pulled by cats? Well. . .
• ?July 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, etymology ?6 Comments
• In a world that knows too many details about unimportant matters, one would think that our collective expertise could be certain about something as essential as the days of the week. There is, however, a scholarly debate regarding which goddess of love in Norse mythology is the namesake of “Friday.” To complicate matters, it may [...]
• Obama’s “mongrel people” remark raises a touchy topic. What did he say, and what does “mongrel” mean?
• ?July 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?100 Comments
• Yesterday, President Barack Obama visited daytime talk show “The View” and touched on a wide range of topics, including Lindsay Lohan’s prison term. But during a more serious exchange, Obama used a word to describe African-Americans that has its own complex and emotional history: “mongrel.” The president and the five “View” co-hosts were discussing the recent [...]
• A “zedonk,” half donkey/zebra, was just born. What are the parents of ligers, dzos, and beefalos?
• ?July 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: animals, naming ?110 Comments
• Zedonk. Yes, this is for real. ”The offspring of a zebra and a donkey.” Prepare yourself for an even larger dose of absurdity: there are plenty more zany names for unlikely crossbreeds, and we’ve collected a nonsensical herd of them. We don’t know if the baby zedonk, born in the state of Georgia about a week ago, [...]
• WikiLeaks, wiki-this, wiki-that. What does “wiki” mean, & what exotic language is it from?
• ?July 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?54 Comments
• Wiki. Don’t you? But have you ever wondered what wiki means? WikiLeaks has been in the news lately because it released a document that encompasses over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan. Wikileaks is a site that obtains and publishes sensitive material and is designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists, and activists.
• You’re not asleep, but you’re not awake either. What’s the word for that mysterious feeling?
• ?July 27, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?87 Comments
• A hypnic jerk is someone you wouldn’t want to share a cab with, right? Actually, it is a feeling that many of us experience nightly. In “Inception” the dream travelers move from dream to dream via a “kick,” which is like a hypnic jerk. Sleep starts, night starts, or hypnagogic jerks are also names for the [...]
• What term describes your relationship: polygyny, polyamory, monandry? Plus, what polygamy actually means
• ?July 27, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?28 Comments
• Sex, marriage, and the law. Always complicated. That’s why there are so many words to describe how two people (sometimes more) live and love together. Like polygamy. Do you remember the 2007 arrest of Warren Jeffs, a religious leader and polygamist on charges involving multiple marriages and underage girls? The case, and polygamy, are back in [...]
• How yoga poses like “downward dog” get their names (and what “yoga” means exactly)
• ?July 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?20 Comments
• You can buy yoga mats in grocery stores and take yoga classes at gyms, hospitals, or even malls. It may have originated in India, but yoga is now practiced worldwide through variations of traditional physical and mental disciplines. For some it is a type of medicinal exercise, while for others it is simply a way [...]
• "Honey" and "moon"? Sure, they’re fun, but what exactly does "honeymoon" mean?
• ?July 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?28 Comments
• The most talked-about wedding of the summer is almost here (July 31st.) But where will Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mevzinsky take their honeymoon? And why is the post-wedding holiday called by that name? The word derives from the Old English hony moone. Hony refers to the new marriage’s sweetness, as well a reference to the European [...]
• “Nerd!” “Geek!” Do you consider these words insults or praise? Learn both of their bizarre origins
• ?July 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?68 Comments
• It was hard to miss the weekend hype about Comic-Con, the massive sci-fi and comic book convention. And “Inception” is still conjuring up all sorts of brainy talk: “what does inception actually mean?” (Here’s the answer.) “What do you call someone who wakes up in their dreams?” (Find out here.) Which brings us to nerd and geek. [...]
• What exactly do the “virgin” and “extra-virgin” in olive oil mean?
• ?July 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, naming ?27 Comments
• The purity of some extra-virgin olive oils is being challenged. A recent report found that 69 percent of imported oils and 10 percent of domestic oils sampled from grocery stores shelves in the U.S. did not meet the international standards that define the title of extra-virgin. But what do these terms really mean? Is there a [...]
• Right now, a rare illness, “Prader-Willi syndrome,” is one of the top Web searches. What does it mean?
• ?July 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?18 Comments
• Every once in a while the Internet creates a mystery. Sunday evening, Prader-Willi syndrome beat out the Gulf oil spill and “Mad Men” on Google. What’s going on? The short answer is that the popular TV show ”Extreme Makeover:
• If you pray and say “amen” at the end, what does it literally mean?
• ?July 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, translation ?159 Comments
• Sunday’s the day of the week when many Americans gather in their respective houses of worship and repeat the same word: amen. But what does the word mean? And why do people say it? Amen is commonly used after a prayer, creed, or other formal statement. It is spoken to express solemn ratification or
• How do storms like Tropical Storm Bonnie get their names?
• ?July 24, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?5 Comments
• As far as storms and hurricanes go, Bonnie isn’t a huge threat. Wait — do you realize how strange it is to refer to a mass of air and water by name, let alone an apellation that reminds you of that neighbor who bakes really great chocolate chip cookies? Briefly, here’s how the names for storms are picked. The [...]
• An “oneironaut” is someone who wakes up in their dreams. What do flying & falling dreams typically mean?
• ?July 22, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Science ?60 Comments
• One reason the dreamy film “Inception” is so successful is wish fulfillment. Who doesn’t fantasize about waking up in someone else’s dreams, let alone your own? In the movie, “inception” is defined as the ability to enter another’s dream and plant an idea within the person’s subconscious. Of course, the real definition of “inception” is not quite so [...]
• What word do scientists use to describe the most ginormous star ever discovered?
• ?July 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?70 Comments
• If you find something that’s bigger than you thought was physically possible, how would you describe it? You start with what you already have, which is R136a1, the equivalent of a cosmic ZIP code. The R stands for Radcliffe Observatory, which located the star in the first place (long before anyone knew its immensity.) Massive [...]
• How do you pronounce “whooping cough” and why is it called that? Plus, learn its symptoms
• ?July 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, naming, Science ?29 Comments
• Whooping cough, known by its medical name pertussis, has been in the news lately due to its disturbing reemergence. So far this year, nearly 1,500 cases have been reported in California alone. An infant died of the disease on Tuesday in Los Angeles County. Pertussis is an infectious illness of the respiratory mucous membrane characterized by a [...]
• Pot? Why marijuana is called the same thing we cook soup in
• ?July 20, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, Language, translation ?124 Comments
• How did the word for a common kitchen instrument become slang for marijuana? Actually, the origin of pot has nothing to do with the culinary tools. The word came into use in America in the late 1930s. It is a shortening of the Spanish potiguaya or potaguaya that came from potación de guaya,
• What do the “twen-” and “-ty” in twenty mean exactly?
• ?July 19, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, hidden meaning, Language ?65 Comments
• Think about what you take for granted. Do you ever wonder why “America” is named after Amerigo Vespucci? Why we call green green? The same goes for twenty. Twenty is the natural number sandwiched between nineteen and twenty-one. The word comes from the Old English twegen, which means
• If you gain wisdom from staring at your belly button, it’s “omphaloskepsis.” Plus, “innie” and “outie” defined
• ?July 18, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, Science ?47 Comments
• Some of us get squeamish at the sight of them. Some of us shoot studs into them. Some of us forget they are even there. No two are exactly alike — even for identical twins. The belly button is the scar on the abdomen that is caused when the umbilical cord, through which the mammalian [...]
• Define your films: Are you sure what “inception” and “despicable” mean?
• ?July 16, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?22 Comments
• “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” “Despicable Me.” “Inception.” Before you shell out the dough for a ticket, inform your decision with the meaning behind the titles. “Inception” is director Christopher Nolan’s first film since the box office behemoth “The Dark Knight.” Nolan has a habit of using sophisticated, one-word titles for his films (besides the Batman series): [...]
(E?)(L?) https://www.dictionary.com/e/cussing-swearing-cursing/?itm_source=parsely-api



What’s The Difference Between Cussing, Swearing, And Cursing?





• Bleep! What's the difference between cussing, swearing, and cursing?
• ?July 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, In the News ?331 Comments
• U2 singer Bono infamously uttered what many consider the “worst” swear word in the English language during the 2003 Golden Globes. The U.S. government, through the FCC, responded with what they called the "fleeting expletive" policy, which stated that broadcasters could be fined for allowing even a single curse word on live television. But on Tuesday, a federal [...]
• The legendary beast, the chupacabra, means “goat-sucker.” Why the odd name?
• ?July 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, translation ?11 Comments
• Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil. Weird creatures with weird names. The chupacabra, Spanish for “goat sucker,” is in good company. A rancher and a sheriff in Fort Hood, Texas, made headlines this week when they found and killed an odd, “real ugly” beast. Animal experts
• Why avocados are called “alligator pears” and “fertility fruit”?
• ?July 15, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, translation ?70 Comments
• As you munch on guacamole and chips, chew on the etymology of the humble avocado. Its many names are as wacky as the fruit is yummy. Guacamole is in the news because a study links the beloved dip to many cases of food poisoning. The reason? Raw ingredients that may not be washed properly or adequately [...]
• What is a bastille, and what is the violent story of Bastille Day?
• ?July 14, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, History ?26 Comments
• Today, the world parties in the name of France. But do you know what makes Bastille Day so important not just for France but the history of all democracies? The occasion is typically honored with military parades and copious consumption of libations (alcohol.) This mix of weapons and wooziness
• The YMCA is now officially just “the Y.” But is Y a vowel or consonant?
• ?July 13, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: alphabet, In the News ?101 Comments
• The YMCA has announced its first branding change in 43 years. The organization will now be known officially as the Y. This may seem a no-brainer to Americans who have casually referred to the Young Men’s Christian Association by its familiar abbreviation
• Have you ever noticed “FICO” by your credit score? What it means
• ?July 13, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?1 Comment
• When was the last time you ordered a credit report? The paper document is abstruse enough, but you have to maneuver through the morass of oddly-named companies that produce them — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and more. The process is abstract, but the results are concrete. There’s some new, and bad, news about those infamous numbers. More than a
• Why is Easter Island named “Easter,” and what is its native name?
• ?July 12, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: History, translation ?14 Comments
• This past weekend, a rare total solar eclipse was visible in the South Pacific, and Easter Island was one of the best locations on the planet to witness the astronomical phenomenon. This spot, one of the most isolated inhabited places on the planet, bears a mystique to rival the island from “Lost.” The instantly recognizable [...]
• What does “love” mean in tennis, and how did it get that odd and lovely name?
• ?July 11, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning ?44 Comments
• There is no moment in sports more romantic than the beginning of a tennis game, when the score is “love-love” and anything is possible. During the recent Wimbledon tennis tournament, a timeless question came to mind: What is love? Or in this case, what is tennis love?
• The dog days of summer are here, and the name comes from stars (not dogs)
• ?July 10, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, space ?18 Comments
• The dog days of summer, the sultriest time of the year, have undoubtedly arrived. Some believe that the wicked, mid-summer heat drives dogs mad, hence the expression. But as every pet owner knows, prolonged heat waves do just the opposite. The poor pups pant listlessly in the
• A giant eyeball is a Web craze, so what do you call the stuff inside the ball?
• ?July 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, Science ?16 Comments
• Sometimes the Internet community gets a little twitterpated about random stuff. In this case, a 30-foot sculpture of an eyeball in Chicago has transmogrified artist Tony Tasset into an online celebrity. Web searches on “giant eyeball” went bananas. Let’s use this eye mania as an excuse to take a look at some of the wonderful names for the parts [...]
• LeBron is called “narcissistic,” a word tied to a deadly Greek myth
• ?July 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?11 Comments
• LeBron James has inspired the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team he left for the Miami Heat, to write an open letter to the basketball MVP that uses some very juicy words. Thank you, Dan Gilbert, for giving us a reason to gaze into the freakish history of narcissistic. The story starts with anger, [...]
• The New York Knicks is short for “Knickerbocker.” What that means
• ?July 9, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology ?13 Comments
• The most interesting question in basketball at this moment, lexicographically speaking, has to do with the New York Knickerbockers. (Sorry, LeBron James.) Now, before you start throwing knickknacks at your computer screen, indulge a brief explanation. Knickerbocker was a common surname among the
• What is soft about a soft drink? What does soda have to do with sodium?
• ?July 8, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?61 Comments
• Some call it soda. Others say soft drink, fizzy drink, soda pop, or just plain-old pop. There is no right word for the sweet carbonated beverage, although it would be wrong not to know the linguistic background behind the bubbles. A much-discussed soda ban in Los Angeles schools has increased our thirst. For knowledge, that [...]
• That infamous “tattoo”: Learn why taboo and booze come with the word
• ?July 7, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, History ?17 Comments
• Tattoos and superstars — like peanut butter and jelly. In just the past few weeks, singers Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, actresses Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox, basketball sensation Chris “Bird Man” Andersen, and reality-TV dad Jon Gosselin all have showed off new tats. The practice of tattooing dates back to the Neolithic period. The [...]
• Tar balls, sure. But what part of an oil spill is called chocolate mousse?
• ?July 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News, Science ?36 Comments
• Can you imagine cleaning up an oil spill for a living? You would need words to talk about the work. So what is the difference between a tar ball, a patch, a patty, a sheen and a slick? And chocolate mousse. Starting with the term you are hearing all over the news, a tar ball is
• Google’s logo doodle is Frida Kahlo, but what was “doodle” as an insult?
• ?July 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?12 Comments
• Today is the 103rd anniversary of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s birth. Now, the Kahlo-inspired doodle version of the Google logo makes her even more of an icon. To “doodle” is a harmless pastime, with a pen in hand, right? The original sense of the word isn’t so sweet.
• Heat wave term: This “hyper” relation to “hypothermia” is just as risky
• ?July 6, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?17 Comments
• Is it warm where you are? Some people reading this probably think that question is a cruel joke, as they wipe the sweat off their foreheads. Summer scorchers aren’t a joke, and our goal is to share the names and meaning of what doctors call various heat-related health risks and how to avoid any suffering while [...]
• How do your ideas of “socialism” and “democracy” compare to definitions?
• ?July 5, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?60 Comments
• Along with fireworks and barbecue, waxing poetic about freedom has always been an Independence Day tradition. Some of the old chestnuts you hear: the price of freedom is responsibility, be an informed citizen, don’t take your rights for granted . . . What better way for a dictionary-themed blog to honor this insight than by looking at the [...]
• Before Mel Gibson’s rant, what was the word’s link to a religious mystery?
• ?July 2, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?6 Comments
• Mel Gibson sure seems to have a problem with vulgar tirades. Vulgar used to mean “of the common people” before it acquired the sense of “off-color.” And a tirade literally derives from the French tirare, “to pull continuously.” The actor’s ex-girlfriend is making tabloid headlines with claims that she has a recording of the troubled actor engaging in
• How typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones differ (2 are named for monsters)
• ?July 1, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming, Science ?53 Comments
• Hurricane Alex is starting to dwindle, yet it is currently drenching Northern Mexico and causing serious damage. Other storms will turn into hurricanes before we know it, potentially causing catastrophes and very likely pushing the toxic petroleum goo in the Gulf of Mexico deeper and further into the ocean. Are hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons distinct meteorological
• July is named for this man, and there’s a good reason why
• ?July 1, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, hidden meaning ?62 Comments
• Kaboom! June, named for Juno, a famously jealous Roman Goddess, was fun, but July has arrived like fireworks. The new month is named for a mortal, albeit one who devised and ruled an empire. Julius Caesar (as in kaiser and many other modern words) was a political and military genius who conquered Gaul (what is now part



• “Twilight” baby names: Do parents know what Jacob & Isabella mean?
• ?June 30, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?88 Comments
• It wouldn’t be a surprise if today, or very soon, you will be spending some time with Jacob Black and Isabella Marie Swan — more affectionately known as Bella. “Eclipse,” the third installment in the Twilight series hits movie theaters today, with enough vampirism and lycanthropy to last until
• Master the 3 new “official” dog breeds: What Cane Corso means
• ?June 29, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming, Science ?25 Comments
• Today the AKC (American Kennel Club), the main organization for dog breeders in the United States, recognized three new dog breeds: the Icelandic Sheepdog, the Leonberger, and the Cane Corso. This means that breeders of these three types of canine gain access to the
• Sen. Orrin Hatch says he and Elena Kagan had a “colloquy.” Is that good?
• ?June 29, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?3 Comments
• When a nominee for the United States Supreme Court faces confirmation hearings, two things tend to happen. Every single word uttered by the nominee or the Judical Commitee faces intensive scrutiny. Fortunately for the
• Obama’s Twitter error is an excuse to learn the word “twitterpated”
• ?June 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, In the News ?50 Comments
• If you just want to know what twitterpated means, please click here. But if you have a minute or two, there’s a fun story leading up to that delightful word. Over the weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave a joint press conference. Obama said of the Russian President, “During his [...]
• This is a trick question: What do the A, C, and T of the ACT test mean?
• ?June 28, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Education, hidden meaning ?13 Comments
• Into the heat and happy languor of summer, a chilly reminder of grades and scores is smacking students. Right now, people who took the ACT national exam in June are learning their scores. This may explain why the teens around you seem more ecstatic, despondent, or confused than usual. You probably know how it works: kids take the ACT [...]
• Learn what bar code numbers mean in the wake of major cereal recall
• ?June 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?46 Comments
• On Friday, Kellogg’s recalled about 28 million boxes of cereal because consumers reported a unusual smell coming from the packaging that could potentially make people ill. In order to help identify the specific products involved, Kellogg’s referred the public to the universal product code (UPC). That’s the official name for the pattern of black lines on [...]
• Why is this weekend’s full moon (the flower moon) so unusual?
• ?June 26, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: date, etymology, In the News, Science, space ?50 Comments
• When an exceptional full moon peeks out of the sky on Saturday morning, a whole host of lunar vocabulary will come with it. It’s no coincidence that the word “moon” looks like “month.” They share a Germanic base — plus, the moon’s cycle resets itself on average every 29.53 days. The period of time between [...]
• “Smurf” now has four definitions — and a word error started it all
• ?June 25, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?57 Comments
• The summer’s blockbuster films keep coming every weekend, assailing us with men of iron, ogres, toy cowboys and Cheshire cats. But some cinephiles are already looking ahead to next summer, especially with the recent release of the very short trailer for “The Smurfs.” Those famous blue cartoon characters (and their memorable theme song) sparked a thought: [...]
• How the iPhone got its name, and what droid and kindle really mean
• ?June 24, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, etymology, naming, Science ?78 Comments
• Did you wait for hours to be one of the first to own the iPhone 4? If you think people who stand in line for new devices are silly, fill in the blank: “I can’t live without my ——————” You may not be a super early adopter, but your gadget/gizmo/doohickey/thingamajig/mobile device
• If you encounter “the God particle” today, this is what it means
• ?June 24, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?36 Comments
• Step aside Lady Gaga. The next musical craze might soon come from the CERN particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border. (The acronym, in French, stands for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire [European Council for Nuclear Research].) Scientists there are using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to smash
• U.S. soccer has been plagued by the offside rule. Get its meaning
• ?June 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?51 Comments
• The U.S. soccer team brought the victory drama against Algeria with a nail-biting late goal by instant-superstar Landon Donovan. What made the World Cup match even more epic was the intense hardship the U.S. has suffered from referees and the interpretation of Law 11 of the official soccer Rules of the Game: the offside rule. So [...]
• Learn the mystery of coffee’s name (and a beautiful phrase along the way)
• ?June 23, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, naming ?46 Comments
• Just how caffeinated do you like to be? A medical study has found that the more coffee subjects guzzled during the day, the lower their risk of contracting a rare form of head and neck cancer. People who drank at least 4 cups a day seemed to cut their risk by one-third.
• What does the palsy in cerebral palsy mean? How many palsies are there?
• ?June 22, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?21 Comments
• Zach Anner is on the cusp of becoming a huge celebrity. He’s been leading the contestants in Oprah Winfrey’s “Search for the Next TV Star” contest. His hilarious audition tape has received almost 3.5 million votes so far. What makes Zach above-and-beyond incredible, in addition to
• Right now, oil has everyone talking “moratorium.” What does it mean?
• ?June 22, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: In the News, naming ?19 Comments
• After the massive gulf oil spill on April 20th, the Obama Administration imposed a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling and suspended existing efforts. Today, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans overturned the moratorium, citing “the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region” and more. It’s no coincidence that the [...]
• Tuesday really is named for a one-handed god named Tiw. Who is he?
• ?June 22, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: Current Events, date, etymology, naming ?164 Comments
• Yes, it’s true. Tiw’s remarkable myth involves women with beards (more on that in a bit.) Regardless, the past 1,000 years or so have not been kind to this Northern European divinity. To make a long story short, it seems that Tiw used to be a big shot, up there with Odin and Thor in Norse [...]
• What do you call “a woman whose husband is unfaithful”?
• ?June 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, In the News ?14 Comments
• Like all seasons of the “Bachelor” or “Bachelorette,” the current series is ridiculous, amusing, and melodramatic. It’s also filled with hints of betrayal, egotism and eccentricity, not exactly the ingredients of a sustainable real-life relationship. Here are a few words from the lexicon of risky romance that
• “Gaza,” “Israel,” — learn the powerful history of these words
• ?June 21, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History ?15 Comments
• The Gaza Strip — also referred to as just Gaza — has made international headlines again. On Sunday, the Israeli government announced that it will ease the overland blockage of some goods into the Palestinian territory. The word “Gaza” comes from the Hebrew “Azzah,” loosely
• Big Vitamin B6-cancer news raises the question: What do the B and 6 mean?
• ?June 20, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: hidden meaning, In the News, naming ?35 Comments
• A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that smokers with greater amounts of Vitamin B6 may be less likely to develop lung cancer. The findings are preliminary, but have caused a lot of excitement. Behind the promising health news is a great
• What is the A in “A-Team”? And what does karate mean in Japanese?
• ?June 19, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, In the News ?37 Comments
• This weekend, the movie box office belongs to “Toy Story 3.” But pop culture has a strange way of sticking around, like a soda bottle on the beach. Consider that two pretty silly slices of entertainment, “The Karate Kid” and “The A-Team”, have been
• Today is a stock market “quadruple witching day.” What does that mean?
• ?June 18, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, History, In the News ?7 Comments
• Financial markets climb and plunge for all sorts of reasons, some of which are rational and some that seem like they are based in hocus pocus. The third Friday of June is typically a quadruple witching day, which sounds like magic but actually describes a logical
• What is a Celtic? And what lakes are the Lakers named after?
• ?June 17, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: etymology, hidden meaning, History ?51 Comments
• Game seven of the NBA Finals. A familiar rivalry that actually becomes more exciting because the teams have so much basketball history. Let’s step back from the oomph and ebullience of the Finals for a minute. How much do you know about the basics behind
• An exotic term tops Web searches: “prosopagnosia.” What is it?
• ?June 17, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: naming, Science ?18 Comments
• Popular Web searches are predictable: celebrities, sporting events, scandals. But every once in a while, a truly exotic word rushes into the mix. Today, that term is prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is a rare disorder that is informally known as
• The Kinect is a game sensation, but what does the word actually mean?
• ?June 16, 2010 ?by: Dictionary.com blog ?in: computers, etymology, naming ?29 Comments
• Either you, or someone you know, is probably paying attention to Kinect, Microsoft’s new controller-less addition for the Xbox that allows people to play games with their entire bodies. What about the word? It’s pronounced like “connect,” but why

effingpot
The Best of British

The American's guide to speaking British.

The seven sections on the left contain over 1000 words and expressions that have varied in their usage between the US and the UK. This site started as a simple list to amuse our friends when we moved to the USA for 2 years - believe it or not, to a house in Tossa Lane!!!

This list was compiled around 10 years ago and is all based on actual discussions with Americans from many States as we travelled around the USA. Of course, everyone has different experiences and the language seems to vary so much, and has moved on over the last decade, so don't be surprised if you find yourself questioning some of what you read.

Take it all with a pinch of salt and in the spirit of fun.

But most of all .... Enjoy!

Dr. Effingpot!

• - Slang
• - People
• - Motoring
• - Clothing
• - Around the house
• - Food & drink
• - Odds & sods

Ace | Aggro | All right? | Anti | Any road | Arse | Arse about face | Arse over elbow | Arse over tit | Arsehole | Arseholed | As well | Ass | Au fait | Baccy | Bang | Barmy | Beastly | Bees Knees | Belt up | Bender | Bespoke | Best of British | Biggie | Bite your arm off | Bladdered | Blast | Blatant | Bleeding | Blimey | Blinding | Blinkered | Bloody | Blooming | Blow me | Blow off | Blunt | Bob's your uncle | Bodge | Bogey | Bollocks | Bomb | Bomb | Bonk | | Bottle | Box your ears | Brassed off | Brill | Budge up | Bugger | Bugger all | Bum | Bung | Bung | Butchers | C of E | Camp | Chat up | Cheeky | Cheerio | Cheers | Cheesed off | Chin Wag | Chinese Whispers | Chivvy along | Chuffed | Clear off! | Cobblers | Cock up | Cockney rhyming slang | Codswallop | Cor | Cracking | Cram | Crap | Crikey | Crusty dragon | Daft | Dekko | Dear | Dicky | Diddle | Dim | Dishy | Do | Do | Do | Doddle | Dodgy | Dog's bollocks | Dog's dinner | Donkey's years | Drop a clanger | Duck | Duff | Duffer | Dull | Easy Peasy | Engaged | Excuse me | Faff | Fagged | Fagging | Fancy | Fanny | Fanny around | Fiddle sticks | Filch | Fit | Flog | Fluke | Flutter | Fortnight | Fruity | Full monty | Full of beans | Gagging | Gallivanting | Gander | Gen | Gen up | Get lost! | Get stuffed! | Getting off | Give us a bell | Gobsmacked | Good value | Goolies | Gormless | Grem | Grub | Gutted | Haggle | Hanky panky | Hard | Hard lines | Hash | Have | Healthy | Her Majesty's pleasure | Hiya | Honking | Horses for courses | How's your father? | Hump | Hunky | I'm easy | Irony/sarcasm | Jammy | Jimmy | John Thomas | Jolly | Keep your pecker up | Khazi | Kip | Knackered | Knees up | Knob | Knock off | Knock up | Knockers | Knuckle sandwich | Leg it | Left, right and centre | Love bite | Lurgy | Luvvly | | Mate | Momentarily | Morish | Mufti | Mug | Mush | Mutt's nuts | Naff | Nancy boy | Nark | Narked | Nesh | Nice one! | Nick | Nicked | Nitwit | Nookie | Nosh | Not my cup of tea | Nowt | Nut | Off colour | Off your trolley | On about | On the job | On the piss | On your bike | One off | Owt | Pants | Pardon me | Parky | Pass | Pavement pizza | Peanuts | Pear shaped | Piece of cake | Pinch | Pip pip | Piss poor | Piss up | Pissed | Pissing around | Porkies | Porridge | Posh | Potty | Pound sign | Prat | PTO | Puff | Puke | Pukka | Pull | Pussy | Put a sock in it | Put paid to | Queer | Quid | Quite | Rat arsed | Read | Really | Redundancy | Reverse the charges | Right | Ring | Roger | Round | Row | Rubbish | Rugger | Rumpy pumpy | Sack/sacked | Sad | Scrummy | Scrumping | Send | Shag | Shagged | Shambles | Shambolic | Shirty | Shite | Shitfaced | Shufti | Skew | Skive | Slag | Slapper | Slash | Sloshed | Smarmy | Smart | Smashing | Smeg | Snap | Snog | Snookered | Sod | Sod all | Sod's law | Sorted | Speciality | Spend a penny | Splash out | Squidgy | Squiffy | Starkers | Stiffy | Stone the crows | Stonker | Stonking | Strop | Stuff | Suss | Sweet fanny adams | Swotting | Ta | Table | Taking the biscuit | Taking the mickey | Taking the piss | Talent | Tara | Throw a spanner in the works | Tickety | Tidy | To | Todger | Toodle pip | Tool | Tosser | Totty | TTFN | Twat | Twee | Twit | Two finger salute | U | Uni | Wacky backy | Waffle | Wangle | Wank | Wanker | Watcha | Waz | Well | Welly | Whinge | Willy | Wind up | Wobbler | Wonky | Write to | Yakking | Yonks | Zed | Zonked

| Barmaid | Barman | Barrister | Beefeater | Bender | Berk | Big girl's blouse | The Bill | Bint | Bird | Bloke | Bobby | Boffin | Bonce | Bristols | Brum | Brummy | Bum chum | Buns | Burk | Busker | Butterfingers | Cack | Cake hole | Cashier | Chalk and cheese | Chap | Chav | Christian name | Chuck | Chum | Clever clogs | Clever dick | Clot | Cloth ears | Codger | Copper | Dapper | Dim wit | Dip stick | Divvy | Dog's body | Don | Duck | Duffer | Dustman | Estate agents | Father Christmas | Fire brigade | Flat mate | Flower | Forehead | Fresher | Gaffer | Geezer | Git | Gob | Grockles | Guard | Gumby | Guv | Gypo | Hooray Henry | Hooter | Jammy beggar | Job's worth | Konk | Lad | Ladette | Landlady | Landlord | Loaf | Lollipop man | Long sighted | Lug holes | Mate | Mean | Minger | Morris dancer | Mother | Mum | Namby pamby | Naughty bits | Nobby no | Nosey parker | Nutter | Old Lag | On your tod | Page three girl | Pikey | Pillock | Plod | Plonker | Po | Ponce | Poofter | Posty | Prefect | Punter | Randy | Red Indian | Room mate | Scatty | School leaver | Scouse | Scouser | Scrubber | Septic | Shareholder | Short sighted | Sideboards | Skiver | Slag | Slapper | Smart arse | Solicitor | Sponger | Spotty youth | Sprog | Squire | Staff | Swot | Tart | Thick | Toff | Trainspotter | Tramp | Turf accountant | Ulcer | Up the duff | Very well | Vet | Wally | Wazzock | Weed | Woofter | Wuss | Yank | You lot

AA | Aerial | Amber | Articulated lorry | Banger | Belisha beacon | Bonnet | Boot | Bulb | Bump start | Bus station | Cab | Cabriolet | Call | Car | Car park | Cat's eyes | Cattle class | Central reservation | Chunnel | Coach | Crash | Cul | De | Diversion | Double decker | Double yellow lines | Drink driving | Drunk in charge | Dual carriageway | Due care and attention | Economy | Estate car | Excess | Fire engine | Flyover | Fog lights | Ford | Gallon | Gas | Gearstick | Give way | Glove box | Hard shoulder | Hand brake | Head lamp | Hire car | Hooter | Indicator | Jam sandwich | Lay | Level crossing | Lights | Lorry | Lorry driver | Magic Roundabout | Manual | Motorway | Multi storey | Near side lane | No entry | Number plate | Overtake | Pavement | Pedestrian crossing | Pelican crossing | Petrol | Petrol station | Pile | Prang | RAC | Red route | Road works | Roof | Roof | Roundabout | Saloon | Second class | Silencer | Slip road | Spanner | Subway | Tailback | Tick over | Ton | Traffic wardens | Transporter | Turn right | Verge | Windscreen | Windscreen wipers | Wing | Write | Zebra crossing

| Balaclava | Boiler suit | Boob tube | Brace | Braces | Bum bag | Cagoule | Cardie | Cozzy | Daps | Dinner jacket | Dressing gown | Dungarees | Frock | Jersey | Jumper | Knickers | Mac | Muffler | Nappy | Pants | Pinafore | Pinny | Plimsolls | Polo neck | Pullover | Pumps (Plimsolls, Daps) | Suspenders | Swimming costume | Tights | Trainers | Trousers | Undies | Vest | Waistcoat |

Action replay | Aga | Airing cupboard | Answerphone | Bathroom | Beading | Bedsit | Bin | Bin bag | Bin day | Bin liner | Bin lorry | Bin men | Blower | Bog | Box | Brolly | Budgie | Bungalow | Caravan | Ceefax | Continental quilt | Cooker | | Couch | Council house | Council estate | Cubby hole | Cupboard | Des res | Dresser | Dust cart | Dustbin | Duvet | Earth | Eiderdown | Emulsion | En | Estate | Flat | Flex | Garden | Gazumping | Hand basin | Hessian | Hob | Housing estate | Khazi | Kitchen towel | Laundry basket | Loft | Loo | Lounge | Mobile home | Paper knife | Paraffin | Power point | Run the bath | Sand pit | Schooner | Secateurs | Settee | Shammy | Skirting board | Tap | Teletext | Telly | Thatch | To let | Toilet | Trunk call | Video | Wardrobe | White goods | Wireless

99 | Afters | Aubergine | Bacon | Banger | Bap | Barbie | Beer | Beer mat | Beetroot | Best | Bevvy | Bickie | Bill | Biscuit | Bitter | Black pudding | Blancmange | Brown bread | Brown sauce | Bubble & squeak | Bucks fizz | Buns | Butty | Candyfloss | Canteen | Castor sugar | Chip butty | Chip shop | Chipolata | Chips | Cider | Clingfilm | Clotted cream | Cocktail stick | Cordial | Coriander | Cornflour | Cornish pasty | Cottage pie | Courgette | Crackling | Cream Tea | Crisps | Crispy duck | Crumpet | Cuppa | Curry | Digestive biscuit | Dish up | Doner | Double cream | English muffin | Entree | Faggot | Fairy cake | Fillet | Fish and chip shop | Fish cake | Flake | Garibaldi | Gherkin | Golden Syrup | Granary | Gravy | Grill | Grub | Haggis | Herb | Hob nobs | Horlicks | Hot pot | HP Sauce | Iced tea | Icing sugar | Jacket potato | Jaffa cake | Jam | Jellied eels | Jelly | Joint | Kedgeree | Kipper | Lager | Lager lout | Lemonade | Liver sausage | Marmite | Mash | Mince | Mince Pies | Mushy peas | Neat | Normal | Nosh | Nosh | Offal | Off licence | Pancake roll | Parkin | Parsley sauce | Parson's nose | Pastry base | Pea fritter | Peckish | Perry | Pickle | Pickled eggs | Pickled onions | Pie | Pimms | Pint | Plonk | Ploughman's Lunch | Pop | Pork pies | Pork scratchings | Porridge | Pub grub | Pudding | Rasher | Rump steak | Runner beans | Salad cream | Sarny | Saveloy | Savoury | Scoff | Scones | Scotch egg | Scrumpy | Semi skimmed | Semolina | Shandy | Shepherd's pie | Simnel cake | Single cream | Sirloin steak | Skimmed milk | Soldiers | Spirits | Spotted dick | Spring onions | Spring roll | Squash | Starter | Steak & kidney pie | Steak & kidney pudding | Stock cube | Stodge | Stone | Stuffed | Suet | Sweets | Swiss roll | Take | Tarts | Tea | Tin | Toad in the hole | Tomato sauce | Treacle pudding | Twiglets | Vacuum flask | Water | White | White sauce | Wine gums | Yorkshire pudding

24 hour clock | 999 | A | Abbatoir | Advert | Aeroplane | AGM | Aluminium | American football | Autocue | Autumn | B&B | Bank holiday | Bar billiards | BBC English | Beeb | Big dipper | Big Issue | Bill | Billiards | Billion | Biro | Blighty | Bling | Blinkers | Blu tac | Boarding school | Bob | Bob | Bonfire night | Booze cruise | Brackets | Britain | Car boot sale | Carnival | Carvery | Cashpoint machine | Casualty | Catapult | Chat show | Chemist | Cheque | Christmas Crackers | Chrysanths | Cinema | Coconut shy | College | Comprehensive school | Conkers | Cot | Counterfoil | Course | Cutlery | CV | Daddy long legs | Day boys/girls | Desmond | Direct debit | Directory enquiries | Dirty weekend | Dodgem cars | Doodle bug | Dosh | Draughts | Drawing pin | Drink up | Dummy | Egg timer | Elastoplast | Eleven plus | Elevenses | Eurovision song contest | Fag | Fair | Fancy dress | Fete | Film | Finals | First floor | Fiver | Flannel | Football | Form | Fresher's ball | Fringe | Fringe | Fruit machine | Full stop | Gangway | GCSE | Grammar school | Guide dog | Gum | Handbag | Hen night | High Street | High Street Shops | Hole in the wall | Holiday | Hoover | Hurling | Hypermarket | Insects | Jasper | Johnny | Kiss gate | Chuck was determined to make friends during his trip to England | Ladybird | Lead | Leaving do | Letter box | Licence fee | Lift | Local | Lounge bar | Marigolds | Marks and Sparks | Marquee | Maths | Mobile | Naughts and crosses | Note | O | Over the moon | Oxbridge | Pantomime | Parcel | Pay packet | Pay rise | Pence | Penny farthing | Photocopier | Pictures | Pillar box | Polystyrene | Polytechnic | Pompey | Pontoon | Post | Post mortem | Postbox | Postcode | Postman | Pram | Premium bonds | Prep school | Primary school | Property | Pub | Pub crawl | Public convenience | Public school | Purse | Pushchair | Pylon | Queue | RAF | Railway | Rates | Reception | Return | Revise | Rise | Rounders | Rubber | Rubber Johnny | Rubbish | Saloon | School | Secondary school | Sellotape | Semi | Serviette | Set down | Shares | Shop | Shopping trolley | Shove | Skip | Skipping rope | Sledge | Snooker | Spondulicks | Stag night | Stand for election | Standing order | Stone | Strimmer | Surgery | Swimming baths | Telephone box | Telephone directory | Tenner | Tick | Timber | Time | Tippex | Tire | Torch | Trolley | Tube | TV licence | TV programme | Tyre | UK | Underground | University | VAT | Wad | Wallet | Wash up | Way out | WC | Wedge | White horse | Wonga | Year

ethnologue.com - Languages of / Sprachen von USA (Americas)

ethnologue.com - Abenaki - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Abnaki, Eastern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Acadian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Acadian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Acadien - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Acgachemem - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Achomawi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Achumawi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Acoma - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Adyghe - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Afro-Seminole - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Afro-Seminole Creole - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Agachemem - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ahahnelin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ahe - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ahtena - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ahtna - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ajachema - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ajachemem - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Akimel O'odham - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Alabama - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Albanian, Gheg - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Albanian, Tosk - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Aleut - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Aleut - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Alibamu - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Alkansea - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Alsea - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Alséya - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Alutiiq - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Amerax - Language of US

ethnologue.com - American Sign Language - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ameridish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ameslan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Amish Pennsylvania German - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Anaktuvik Pass Inupiatun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ananin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Andaste - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Angloromani - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Apache, Jicarilla - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Apache, Kiowa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Apache, Lipan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Apache, Mescalero-Chiricahua - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Apache, Western - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Apsaalooke - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arabic, Judeo-Tunisian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arabic, Najdi Spoken - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arapaho - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arctic Red River - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arctic Village Gwich'in - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arikara - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arikaree - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arikari - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arikaris - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arkansas - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Armenian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Arrapahoe - Language of US

ethnologue.com - ASL - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Assiniboin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Assiniboine - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Assyrian Neo-Aramaic - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Atakapa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Atka - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Atkan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Atna - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Atsina - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Atsugewi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Attuan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Azerbaijani, South - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bahamas Creole English - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bahnar - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ballo-Kai-Pomo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bannock - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Barbareño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Basque - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Batem-Da-Kai-Ee - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Baxoje - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Belarusan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Belize Kriol English - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bengali - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bethel Yupik - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Big Woods French - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Biloxi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Black American Sign Language - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Black English - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Black Seminole - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Blackfeet - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Blackfoot - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bodega - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Brao - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Breton - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bru, Western - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Brulé - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bukharic - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Bulgarian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Burmese - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cabanapo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Caddo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Caddoe - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cadien - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cahto - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cahuilla - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cajan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cajun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Campo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Capa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Carmel - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Carolina Algonquian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Castellano - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Catalan-Valencian-Balear - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Catawba - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cayuga - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cebuano - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Central Alaskan Yupik - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Central Minnesota Chippewa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Central Yana - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chaldean Neo-Aramaic - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cham, Eastern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cham, Western - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chaplino - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chehalis - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chehalis, Lower - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chehalis, Upper - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chelan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chemakum - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chemehuevi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chena - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cherokee - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chetco - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cheyenne - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chickasaw - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chiliwack - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chimakum - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chimariko - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chimmezyan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Hakka - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Mandarin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Min Nan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinese, Yue - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinook - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinook Jargon - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinook Pidgin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chinook Wawa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chippewa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chippewa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chiricahua - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chitimacha - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chiwere - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Choctaw - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chru - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chugach - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chugach Eskimo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Chumash - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cibecue - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Clackama - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Clallam - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Clear Lake Pomo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coast Tsimshian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coastal Inupiatun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coastal-Inland - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cochiti - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cocomaricopa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cocopa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cocopah - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coeur d'Alene - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Columbia - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Columbia River Sahaptin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Columbian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Columbia-Wenatchi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Colville - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Comanche - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Concow - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Conestoga - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Conoy - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coos - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Copper River - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coquille - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cora, El Nayar - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coso - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Costanoan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Costanoan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coushatta - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cowichan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cowlitz - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Coyotero - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cree, Plains - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Creek - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Creek - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Crimean Turkish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Crioulo, Upper Guinea - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Croatan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Crow - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cruzeño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cucapá - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Cupeño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Czech - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Dakhota - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Dakota - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Dakota - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Danish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Dawson - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Deg Xinag - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Deg Xit'an - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Degexit'an - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Delaware - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Delaware, Pidgin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Delta River Yuman - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Dena'ina - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Diegueño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Digger - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Digueño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Diné - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Duwamish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - East Bay - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eastern Aleut - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eastern Central Sierra Miwok - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eastern Cherokee - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eastern Keres Pueblo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eastern Ojibwa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Elati - Language of US

ethnologue.com - English - Language of US

ethnologue.com - English Romani - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Entiat - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eskimo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eskimo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Español - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Esselen - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Estonian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Eyak - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Fall Indians - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Farsi, Western - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Finnish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Flathead-Kalispel - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Fort Yukon Gwich'in - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Fox - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Français Acadien - Language of US

ethnologue.com - French - Language of US

ethnologue.com - French Cree - Language of US

ethnologue.com - French, Cajun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Frisian, Eastern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gaelic, Irish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gaelic, Scottish - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Galice - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gallinoméro - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Garifuna - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Geechee - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Georgia - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Georgian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - German, Hutterite - Language of US

ethnologue.com - German, Pennsylvania - Language of US

ethnologue.com - German, Standard - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Giáy - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Goshute - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gosiute - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Greek - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gros Ventre - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gros Ventres - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Guidiville - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gujarati - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gullah - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Guyanese Creole English - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Gwich'in - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Habenapo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Haida, Northern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Haitian Creole French - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Halkomelem - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Han - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hanis - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Han-Kutchin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hano - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Havasupai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Havasupai-Walapai-Yavapai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hawai'i Creole English - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hawai'i Pidgin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hawai'i Pidgin Sign Language - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hawaiian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - HCE - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Healy Lake - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hebrew - Language of US

ethnologue.com - H'hana - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hidatsa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hiligaynon - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hinatsa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hindi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hindustani, Fijian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hiraca - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hitchiti - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hitchiti - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hmong Daw - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hmong Njua - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hocák - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hocak Wazijaci - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hocank - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hochank - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ho-Chunk - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hoh - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hohe - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Holikachuk - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Holkomelem - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Holólupai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hoopa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hopi - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hopland - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hualpai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Huimen - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hulaulá - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hungarian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hupa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Huron - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hutterian German - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Hwalbáy - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Icelandic - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Illinois - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ilocano - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Indonesian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ineseño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ingalik - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ingalit - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Inupiat - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Inupiatun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Inupiatun, North Alaskan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Inupiatun, Northwest Alaska - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Iowa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Iowa-Oto - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ioway - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ipai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Island Chumash - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Isleño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Isleta - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Isleta Pueblo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Italian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Iu Mien - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Japanese - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Jarai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Jemez - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Jiwele - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Jiwere - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Juaneño - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kabardian - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kábinapek - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kabuverdianu - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kabuverdianu Sotavento - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kado - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kadohadacho - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kai Po-Mo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kalapuya - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kalispel - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kalispel-Flathead - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kalispel-Pend D'oreille - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kalmyk-Oirat - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kamia - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kanien'kehaka - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kanjobal, Eastern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kanjobal, Western - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kansa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kanze - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Karachay-Balkar - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Karkin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Karok - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Karuk - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kashaya - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kato - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kaw - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kawaiisu - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kechan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kenai Peninsula - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Keres, Eastern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Keres, Western - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Khabenapo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Khana - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Khmer, Central - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Khmu - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Khuen - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kichai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kickapoo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kikapoo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kikapú - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kikima - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kiksht - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kimiai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kinayskiy - Language of US

ethnologue.com - King Island Inupiatun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kiowa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kitsai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kituhwa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Klallam - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Klamath-Modoc - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Klao - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Klatsop - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Klikitat - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koasati - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kobuk River Inupiatun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koho - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kolchan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koniag - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koniag-Chugach - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Konkau - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Konkow - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Konze - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kootenai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Korean - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koso - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koso Shoshone - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kotzebue Sound Inupiatun - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Koyukon - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Ktunaxa - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kulanapan - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kulanapo - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kumeyaay - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kumiai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kurdish, Northern - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kuskokwim Yupik - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kuskokwim, Upper - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kutchin - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kutenai - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kwaiailk - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kwakiutl - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kweedishchaaht - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kwe-Nee-Chee-Aht - Language of US

ethnologue.com - Kwikapa - Language of US