WORDS

The American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year is “Because”

The American Dialect Society waits until the year is completely finished before holding its vote for the word of the year, a lively event, now in its 24th year, that was held last night. Here are some of the words that were up for discussion.

Parhelia of "sun dogs" appear over a field in Iowa.

11 Wonderful Winter Weather Terms

When winter bears down, it can be hard to think of anything outside of how much you hate (or love!) the snow and ice. Here are a few of the words and phenomena that could define this season.

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year: “Science”

What makes a word the word of the year? Different authorities use different criteria in making their selections.

11 'Word of the Year' Candidates Everyone Forgot Immediately

Hindsight tells us that Word of the Year candidates have not always fared so well.

The Word of the Year Is...

Every year, Oxford Dictionaries names a Word of the Year, the word “that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.”

15 -Philes and What They Love

Love is patient. Love is kind. And often, love is denoted by the Greek root -phile.

3 Reasons for Syllabically Ambiguous Words

Some words can be pronounced with two different syllable structures. What’s more interesting than fighting about who’s right is understanding why these differences arise.

11 Vocabulary Words for Typography Nerds

On the 11th of every month, we publish a bunch of lists of 11. Virginia C. McGuire gets us started.

What Your Facebook Updates Say About Your Age

A recent study analyzed 15.4 million Facebook messages to find which words are used most often by people at different stages of life.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: The Birth of an Idiom

It has been two years since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed as a military policy, but it seems to have taken up residence in our storehouse of ready-made expressions for good, which is not surprising, considering how succinctly it captures a particul

22 Songs that Write Themselves from The Songwriter’s Rhyming Dictionary

While usual rhymes like moon/June are scattered through the lists, the true genius of the book is in pairings like better half/telegraph.

14 Swedish Words That Conflict With the Ikea Products They Name

There's a system to Ikea product naming that matches word categories to product categories. Then there are names that don't relate to the products in any way.

The True Origin Stories of 7 Happy Words

Not all of them started out so happy.

35 Classy Slang Terms for Naughty Bits From the Past 600 Years

Travel back to a time when 'lady’s low toupee' and 'Master John Goodfellow' were perfectly acceptable terms for genitalia.

12 Animal Adjectives to Bolster Your Vocabulary

You know some other animal adjectives ending in -ine: feline (catlike), canine (doggy) and bovine (cow like). How many more are there? A herd, a flock, a whole bunch. Here’s a dozen.

3 Facts About English’s Most Adorable Suffix

Is there any suffix more adorable than the lovely little –ling? It gives us yearlings and starlings, downy ducklings and goslings, affectionate darlings and siblings, and comforting tender dumplings. But –ling hasn’t always been so little and cute. It use

12 Onomatopoeias from Around the World

Other languages have their own ways of representing sounds in the world, too.

77 Common Mispronunciations

You're going to be astonished how many of these you hopefully already know, but I'm sharing them because many millions of people don't. It's not Aw-ree, for instance, it's ah-wry (awry)

6 Alternative Dictionaries Every Bookshelf Needs

Just because some dictionaries have fallen by the wayside in the years since the world's first dictionary doesn't mean that they weren't any good.

What Are Smithereens?

“Blown to smithereens” is such a great, colorful phrase. Almost everyone knows exactly what you mean, without being able to define what exactly a smithereen is. What the heck are they?

14 Street Art Terms—Illustrated!

Street art has gone mainstream. Just about every city in the world—as well as suburbs and deserts—has stickers, murals, and wheatpastes to admire. But what if it’s all graffiti to you?

How Is "I before E except after C" a Rule?

English spelling is hard. It's hard for kids to learn it, and it's hard for adults who have already learned it to remember how to do it right. It would be nice to have some consistent, general rules to go by, but alas, there are few. Maybe none. Even the

5 Phonetic Pitfalls of Shm- Reduplication

By adding shm- to words, you can be simultaneously grumpy and cute. But there are some words that cause confusion about how the shm- should best be attached.

Argle Bargle: 5 Meanings of Word Reduplication

In his angry dissent to the court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act on Wednesday, Justice Scalia conveyed a specific kind of derision through his use of several colloquial expressions. The most noticeable of these expressions was "argle bargle," w

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