Perhaps you’ve scrolled through social media and seen someone comment: Classic self-own. Greatest self-own of the year so far. Olympics-level self-own. Hall-of-fame self-own. This is both a self-own and a universal truth https://t.co/xbHhqovnnL — John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) January 30, 2020 What are these self-owns, and why are they epic? To understand what self-own really means, we must first know the meaning of the slang term …
We’re only a quarter of the way through 2019, but already we’ve seen some significant trends in searches on Dictionary.com. Politics, as ever, has propelled many of the lookups, but that’s not the only driver. Sneak peek: Top terms range from pad thai to deep space. Here are the words setting the search trends through March 2019: 1. Exonerate Our top lookup in early 2019 …
It’s common knowledge that there are 50 states in the United States of America—and you might even be able to name them all—but did you know that four of them are technically considered commonwealths? You might even live in one of these four and not even know it. Read on to find out if you do, and if so, what that means for how your …
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What could words like laurel, dog whistle, lodestar, and self-made possibly have in common? These words and others like them sent hundreds of thousands of folks to Dictionary.com in 2018, searching for answers. Whether you were challenging your friends and family to declare themselves #TeamLaurel or #TeamYanny or playing armchair detective with the words in a cryptic New York Times op-ed, Dictionary.com was here to …
Goodbye, 2019. Hello, 2020! Well, not just yet. As we look ahead to what the new year will bring, we also reflect back on the previous one—and at Dictionary.com, that means analyzing the top words that sent users to our site in 2019. We dived into our data and identified the five words that trended the most each month. And how did we measure those …
At Dictionary.com, we know well that learning new words is about so much more than just definitions. Learning new words is about discovering new ideas and feelings, about unlocking experiences and opportunities. It’s about empowering our communication, enriching our relationships, and inspiring our creativity and self-expression. Composer and Princeton University professor Steven Mackey knows this well, too. And if you give Mackey a word? He …
The English language is famously full of confusing and often contradictory spelling conventions. You know it’s bad when misspell itself is one of the most common misspellings! To identify the words that consistently give people trouble, we analyzed Dictionary.com search data to compile this list of the most commonly misspelled words. For each word, we prepared tips to help you remember how to spell it …
Meteors, meteorites, meteoroids, asteroids, comets … that’s a lot of terms (and space objects) flying around! Not to mention shooting stars and meteor showers. Are they all the same thing? Even though some of them may appear pretty similar to us, the answer is no, they’re not the same thing—especially not to the scientists who study them and who use different terms for specific reasons (more …
From Glenn Close at the Golden Globes to Cyntoia Brown in Tennessee, here’s who (and what) had folks searching for meaning on Dictionary.com the week of January 4–11, 2019. Humanitarian President Donald Trump made his first-ever address to the nation from the Oval Office this week, so it’s no surprise that folks tuned in to see what he had to say, or that plenty stuck …
Birthstones are precious or semiprecious gemstones that are associated with a particular month or sign of the Zodiac. Going back to ancient times, certain gems were believed to bring good fortune if worn during specific months. The origin of this belief is often traced back to the story of the Breastplate of Aaron in the book of Exodus from the Bible. The legendary breastplate was …
