Despite the fact that Passover comes around every spring, you may still have some questions about the holiday. Why does Passover come about at a different time every year, for example, and why is the Passover meal so specific? The key to understanding what the religious observance is all about is understanding where the name Passover originally comes from. What is Passover? Passover is the …
Love is a many splendored thing. That must be why there are so many ways to talk about it. Thanks to love songs, poetry, music, movies, and art, the language of love seems to be constantly expanding, and what better time to brush up on the myriad ways to express your love and affection than on Valentine’s Day? You might be working on a few …
The faster we move, the more abbreviations and acronyms we use, and when it comes to talking about the folks who reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—otherwise known as the White House—there are plenty of acronyms to choose from. The White House has always been home to POTUS (President of the United States). As we have yet to have a female or gay president, if the …
Comic book creators and filmmakers pick some superhero names just because they sound cool. Other names, though, are chosen for their deep connection with a character or setting. Many of the names from Wakanda, the home of Black Panther, are especially rich in symbolism and significance. Join us as we answer these questions and more: Is there a real Wakanda that inspired the name of …
July 17 is World Emoji Day, a day to celebrate all of those wonderful smileys and symbols you use to amuse your friends and confuse your grandparents. To celebrate, we’ve rounded up the most popular emoji that our users have been looking up on Dictionary.com since the last World Emoji day. (It was quite a different world then, wasn’t it?) But first, you might be …
Fittingly, everything about Halloween is a bit bizarre. Kids put on costumes and demand candy from strangers. People decorate their houses with spiderwebs and gravestones. Even the word itself sounds weird. Where does Halloween come from? And how did the celebration of all things spooky come to have a history that’s intertwined with an ancient Celtic festival and a Christian holiday in honor of saints? …
Do you know all of your colors? No, we aren’t just talking about red and green. We mean color words like quercitron, puce, and dragon’s blood. There are so many unique and fascinating words that describe shades of color in our language. If you stop at the basics, you might just miss out on some of the most vivid and historically interesting shades that exist. …
COVID-19 has provided a consistent vocabulary lesson in epidemiology. Among the most important distinctions it has highlighted are the differences between the terms epidemic, pandemic, and endemic. These words have major similarities—all three end in -demic and deal with the spread of disease. But there are key differences, including those related to scale and duration. In this article, we’ll sort out the differences and answer …
Even though the standard calendar year is 365 days, Earth actually takes 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds to go completely around the sun. (This is called a solar year.) In order to keep the calendar cycle synchronized with the seasons, one extra day is (usually) added every four years as February 29. Where did this practice come from? Who came up …
By Lyndsey Gresehover You’ve completed the brainstorming and research. You have created an essay outline that serves as your roadmap (or “skeleton” as some call it) and have even finished the writing. However, there is still one more equally important step to ensure your paper has all the required elements … your writing checklist. Checklists are tools we use in lots of things we do. …
For millions of Asian Americans and Asian peoples around the world, the Lunar New Year is a time to gather with family, start the year off right, and eat a lot of delicious food. Like, a lot. One of the biggest holidays in East Asia, the Lunar New Year will fall on February 10 in 2024. Because it’s based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar, it’s …
![List of words in outlined font, with central word in bold white font, on lilac background: “Janus word, buzzword, cussword, counterword [in bold], weasel word, nonce word, codeword"](https://www.dictionary.com/e/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20220428_counterWords_800x800-380x380.png)
We love all kinds of words: big words, small words, words with silent vowels, and even the word moist. With that in mind, we wanted to find words that feature the word word in them. Without getting too wordy, we managed to find words like foreword, afterword, and doubleword that fit our criterion of being a word with the word word in the word. Being …
