A few decades ago, if you told someone that people would soon be sending one another electronic messages full of cartoon smiley faces, they would have looked at you like, well, 🙃. But, the future is now, and we do indeed send each other emails, texts, and tweets all day long that contain hearts and sparkles, crying faces and laughing faces, and all sorts of creatures, …
By now, we trust you’re not looking up when Mother’s Day is. Surely you’re just consulting the dictionary for the perfect words to grace your mother’s card, right? Well, the numbers don’t lie—and especially not to mothers. Our Data Scientists analyzed what users looked up on Dictionary.com on Mother’s Day in 2018 and found these as the top trends by state. They give and they …
These sites have transformed the internet—and our lives as we know them, including our language. So, get internet-savvy with these words and expressions born from our new, digital normal.
A who’s who in fashion, art, and culture held each year at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, the Met Gala is a black-tie fundraiser that kicks off the institute’s spring exhibition. The 2019 theme for the event and exhibition is “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” As the Met explains, the exhibit examines “camp’s exuberant aesthetic” and “how the elements of irony, humor, parody, …
It’s hard to believe, but this month marks 20 years of daily lexical morsels from Word of the Day. What started as a small audience of intrepid logophiles, who braved spotty dial-up connections for their quotidian word fix in 1999, has blossomed into a vibrant community of Word of the Day devotees, who bring context, conversation, inspiration, and personal connections to our selections every day. …
That one picture hanging slightly crooked on the wall. The car stereo volume left on an uneven number. The one floor tile that breaks the pattern. There are plenty of things that can make our skin start to crawl because they’re just a little bit … off. And, in these scenarios we tend to break out that little acronym that so perfectly describes those annoying …
by Ashley Austrew The word fat holds a complicated place in our society. As an adjective, it joins words like tall, hairy, fluffy, or bright. But, unlike those descriptors, fat isn’t neutral. It’s so often framed as a negative—and used as an insult. However, the body positivity movement, fat activism, and popular books and television shows centered on fat characters are proving that narrative is wearing thin. …
The British and the Americans: two people, as it's said, separated by a common language. Here's a list of some slang terms from the United Kingdom.
by Ashley Austrew What comes to mind when we say country music? Pickup trucks and cowboy hats? Garth Brooks and Patsy Cline? How about West African string instruments and Atlanta-based hip-hop? Past and present, country music—and what gets to be called country music—is far more complex than many realize. What is country music? Country music is defined as “a style and genre of largely string-accompanied American popular …
Internet tech has transformed not only how we date and relate from courtship of olden times, but how we talk about it as well.
