People in the Western world debate many things, from whether cheesecake is actually a cake to which airplane seat is the best—aisle or the window? What year it is generally does not fall into the category of debated facts. However, how to refer to said year and the past years from ancient history—BC and AD or BCE and CE—does. Both sets of abbreviations have history. One …
On January 6, 2021, interest in the words insurrection, sedition, treason, and coup all surged on on Dictionary.com after a mob of supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol building on the day Congress was set to certify the electoral vote count to confirm Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Many journalists, political analysts, and politicians all used these very serious—and consequential—words to refer to …
COVID-19 has set off many unprecedented events that will most likely change the world forever. Fortunately, they haven’t all been bad: the virus led to the remarkable development of vaccines at a pace and scale the likes of which have never before been seen in history. Both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine use a relatively new technology that has been approved for the …
Call it remote learning, online learning, distance learning or homeschooling, there are millions of parents across the country whose children no longer head off to school but rather wake up within the walls of their virtual classroom. While there have always been those parents who choose homeschooling for their children’s education, the COVID-19 pandemic has chosen that option for many who never dreamed they’d (and …
If you’re anything like us, you collect words the same way that other people collect coins or Pokémon cards. You think about words while you’re dreaming, and you’re constantly on the hunt for new words during the day. You underline new vocabulary in books, you keep a note in your smartphone of new words you heard on a podcast, and your friends are afraid to …
Weekends are when many Americans gather in their respective houses of worship and repeat the same word: amen. But, what does the word mean? And, why do people say it? The origins of amen Amen is commonly used after a prayer, creed, or other formal statement. It is spoken to express solemn ratification or agreement. It is used adverbially to mean “certainly,” “it is so,” …
If you’re a parent who’s worried about your kids getting enough learning time right now, you aren’t alone. The pandemic has impacted kids in a major way, and most moms and dads are struggling to find ways to keep their kids engaged with distance learning and off of Nintendo Switch or Netflix for most of the day. One easy solution? Make learning fun by investing …
Both! Bimonthly can refer to something happening “every two months” or “twice a month.” Yep, bimonthly has, fittingly enough, two meanings. What does bi– mean? The prefix bi- means “two,” from the Latin bis, “twice.” The suffix -ly, which usually forms adverbs, is used in bimonthly to mean “every.” It’s used in the same way in several other units of time, including hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly. What does bimonthly …
You’ve likely heard of them before. Their most distinctive feature is a severe and progressive decline in memory, reasoning, and other primary cognitive abilities. Their diagnoses get easily mistaken for one another, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Are dementia and Alzheimer’s the same thing? The short answer is no, they are not. Although tightly intertwined, they are remarkably different. How so? Well, this may come as …
By now, remote learning has become many families’ new normal, but that doesn’t mean every kid is a fan. Many parents are still struggling to figure out how to use Zoom for class every day, let alone how to help their kids focus while they’re learning online. Being able to attend school in pajama pants certainly has its perks, but it can be hard for …
