From NASCAR tracks to Washington, D.C., here are the words that were blowing up the Dictionary.com trending charts October 19–26, 2018. Funner Semi-retired NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt Jr. dropped the word funner on Twitter last weekend, drawing out the language snobs to correct him on his usage. There’s just one problem: Funner is, in fact, a word! Informal though it may be, the word that spiked …
It’s many kids’ favorite part of Halloween. There’s no feeling quite like waiting for a stranger to open their door so you can scream the words “Trick or treat!” But, why do we say it? What does it actually mean? Where does the phrase trick-or-treat come from? While some identify precursors to trick-or-treating in ancient Celtic customs, modern trick-or-treating is thought to be a custom borrowed …
Maybe you’ve read the comic books or seen some of the Marvel movies that feature a big blond guy named Thor, founding member of the Avengers and brother of Loki. But, Thursday is a bigger tribute to the Norse god of thunder than any movie or comic book upon which it’s based. After all, it is “Thor’s day.” Who is Thor? In Norse mythology, the original Thor …
Parenting has changed over the years and so has the language. While some phrases were popular years ago, today they are obsolete - and for good reason. Here are ten old expressions that your parents might have used but you wouldn't dare use today.
Scrabble players are acutely aware that Q is a tricky letter. To use a Q in the game, a player must nearly always find an available U. (We’ll overlook the coveted two-letter word qi that any respectable Scrabble player will know.) 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 …
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 the mass media is paying attention to phonetics, much of …
The Cinderella that English speakers know and love can be traced to the French story Cendrillon, first published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, though Chinese and Greek versions of this classic tale go back to the 9th century CE and 6th century BCE, respectively. Today, there are over 500 variants of Cinderella in Europe alone. It’s no surprise, then, that describing something as a Cinderella …
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 …
English is a more varied (and delicious) melting pot than you think … English—is one of the most incredible, flavorfully-complex melting pots of linguistic ingredients from other countries that’s been left to simmer for (in some cases) centuries. These linguistic ingredients are called loanwords that have been borrowed and incorporated into English. The loanwords are oftentimes so common now, the foreign flavor has been completely …
It’s one of the most versatile words in the English language, but where did the F-word really come from? Originally, the naughtiest of naughty words was actually quite an acceptable word, though no English speaker would say that today.F-ck is believed to have first showed up in written form some time in the 1400s, and it was disguised in a cypher, although it was in use …
Fair warning: Reading ahead will put you in contact with some controversial “bad” words. There are some words in English considered so derogatory and controversial that some people won’t even type them out. They’re shortened, instead, to the just one letter, followed by “word.” The c-word. The b-word. They’re the sort of words young children are told never to utter and most certainly not to hurl …
