This week, Lady Gaga lit up Twitter with a simple question: “What’s fortnight?” What’s fortnight — Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) October 15, 2019 As the viral response to her tweet made plain, Gaga had apparently confused fortnight with the massively popular online video game—and homonym—Fortnite. Gaga’s question also lit up searches on Dictionary.com for fortnight, which, compared to data from, well, a fortnight ago, went up …
Dictionary.com’s United States of Diversity series by Taneesh Khera In 2019, the United Nations is raising awareness about the alarming loss of many of the world’s languages through its International Year of Indigenous Languages. In honor of that initiative, we are shining the spotlight on the languages of the Sioux, and the growing movement to preserve and reinvigorate these rich but endangered tongues. Where did …
These names used to be roughly interchangeable when distinguishing the social outcasts from the in-crowd in school. Yet, those so-called social rejects were destined to rule the world in the form of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, et al. “The geek shall inherit the earth,” indeed. Oh yeah, and billions of dollars. There’s a lot of overlap in the meanings of nerd, geek, and …
There are a lot of words to refer to people who move from one place to another. Some are used in overlapping ways, but there are key differences between many of them, including whether the person is coming or going, and for what reasons. In this article, we’ll break down the differences in meaning and use between the words immigration and emigration, the related forms …
Not all things are created equal: some are good, others are better, and only the cream of the crop rise to the level of best. These three words—good, better, and best—are examples of the three forms of an adjective or adverb: positive, comparative, and superlative. What is the positive form? The positive form of an adjective or adverb is the basic form listed in a dictionary—e.g., …
What does a.m. mean? The term we associate with the morning, a.m., is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase ante merīdiem meaning “before midday.” What does p.m. mean? P.m. is an abbreviation of post merīdiem, meaning—you guessed it—“after midday.” These two terms help keep ambiguity at bay in the 12-hour time system. What does m. mean? There is a third, lesser-known abbreviation in this system: …
All politics, as they say, is personal. That truism definitely rang, well, true in the closing question of the third Democratic debate in Houston, Texas, Thursday, September 12, 2019. One of the moderators, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, asked the ten candidates on “the quality of resilience.” He went on:Every president confronts crises, defeats, and mistakes. So I want to ask each of you, what’s the most …
In the past few weeks, people lined up at Popeyes, a popular restaurant chain known for its Southern-fried chicken, all over the US to get their hands on a hot and hyped new menu item: a chicken sandwich. On Dictionary.com, meanwhile, we saw our own crowd: searches for pandemonium surged nearly 350% since mid-August, when Popeyes released the sandwich en masse. Searches for pandemonium are …
Anyone who has spent nights during their childhood huddled under a comforter with a flashlight (or more recently a flashlight app) lighting up the splayed pages of a book knows that being a bookworm helps you build the sort of vocabulary that earns you eyerolls on the playground and accolades from the teachers. Yet, dedicated bibliophiles know there’s really only one problem that comes with …
The origin of the word pizza The word pizza as we now know it is recorded in English in the early 1800s, though early English lexicographer John Florio enters pizza for “a small cake or wafer” in his historically important 1598 Italian-English dictionary. Pizza, of course, is borrowed from Italian, but the deeper ingredients of the word, if you will, are unclear. Some think the Greek pitta (pita, …
In her novels, Jane Austen (1775–1817) scrutinized the ways that social codes and class place constraints on individuals and relationships. Her own use of language, however, was anything but constrained. It was so playful and inventive—like tittupy, or “bouncing all around,” which a character uses to describe a rickety carriage in Northanger Abbey. While she may not have exactly coined words like tittupy, Austen’s books …
In parts of the US, supper and dinner are used interchangeably to refer to the evening meal, but they’re not exactly synonyms. What do these words mean? Dinner, which dates back to the late 1200s, refers to the main meal of the day—historically, a meal served midday for many peoples. The term comes from the Middle English diner, which, via French, goes back to a …
