Yearly Archives: 2015

  1. soccer, field, ball

    Why Is It Called Soccer?

    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.

  2. 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 …

  3. The Problem With Awesome

    Many words have been wasted on the subject of when adulthood starts. Some hold that it comes about with the right to drink alcoholic beverages or vote in an election. For particularly stringent grammarians of a certain generation, the rite of passage that marks the official start of adulthood is the point at which one becomes annoyed at hearing someone say that something is awesome, …

  4. new words

    Here Are Some New Words Added To Dictionary.com

    In a spring 2015 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.But how do lexicographers (the people who compile and update dictionaries) stay on top of language change? Luckily, we have a number of …

  5. What Does Calling Someone “Mom” On The Internet Mean?

    While Kim Kardashian was busy “breaking the Internet” with her controversial photoshoot for Paper in November of 2014, New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde was teaching the world—or at least her Twitter and Tumblr followers—about a new slang use of the word mom. How is mom used on the internet? These three little letters tweeted out by Lorde in response to Kardashian’s cover photo caused such confusion that the 18-year-old …

  6. 3 Trending Words from the Week’s News

    This week’s trending words touch on the debate surrounding the legalization of marijuana, the earthquake in Nepal, and the latest economic report.smugness: contentedly confident of one’s ability, superiority, or correctness.The story of Shona Banda, a 37-year-old woman in Kansas who has lost custody of her 11-year-old son after he allegedly told school officials that there was drug use at his home, provoked comment from television …

  7. Comprise vs. Compose

    English is comprised of many confusing words. Or is it … composed of many words? Case in point: comprise and compose look very similar and have very similar meanings, so it’s no surprise that it can be hard to keep these two straight. Let’s explore comprise and compose, how they are used, and how you can tell them apart. What do comprise and compose mean? The …

  8. wearable, drawing

    Wearable or Personal Computer: Which Came First?

    The popularity of the Apple Watch has given the noun wearable some additional prominence. This leads to the question of which term came first: wearable or personal computer? As with so many such questions, there is no simple answer.

  9. Shakespeare

    You Didn’t Invent That: Shakespeare’s Spurious Neologisms

    One of the most cherished beliefs of people who collect facts about English is that Shakespeare is the greatest linguistic inventor the language has ever seen. You cannot travel very far online before coming across some article or listicle asserting that he was responsible for giving birth to some exceedingly large portion of our vocabulary, and giving examples of numerous common words that began with …

  10. 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. …

  11. 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.

  12. tales of the jazz age, book cover

    You Didn’t Invent That: F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Jazz Age”

    F. Scott Fitzgerald is widely viewed as having been the inventor of the term jazz age. Numerous books, academic and otherwise, have proclaimed that Fitzgerald named the decade, coined the term, invented the phrase, and so on and so forth. There is no doubt that the phrase became much more widely used after the publication of Fitzgerald’s 1922 book Tales of the Jazz Age, and …