March 14 is a day to think about a specific number: pi. Pi has the same first three digits as the date 3/14—at least when written in the American style, with the month before the day. It’s also a day that people like to indulge in pie, a homophone with a completely different meaning. Pi goes on for much longer than 3.14, of course. And …
The word software is a mass noun because it can be used to refer to a mass (or nonspecific number) of computing programs or products. Mass nouns function as both singular and plural nouns. They can describe either one item, multiple items of the same type, or an entire category of items. Some examples include bread, rice, hair, garbage, and ice. It isn’t necessary to add …
Find Week 1, Week 2, & new Week 3 ELA learning resources for preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle school, and high school students below. As we all prepare to self-isolate, shelter in place, quarantine, hunker down at home, the time for interacting with our kids is upon us. And the fact that many parents are still working [from home] doesn’t make engaging with our kids …
In the 1950s, a new spiritual and nature-focused religion started to gain steam. It was deemed wicca, and its followers called wiccans. For people on the outside looking in, there was the possibility for some confusion on what, exactly, wiccans practiced—including how it related to paganism. Which draws the question: are you pagan if you’re wicca? Someone who is wiccan follows “a nature-oriented religion having …
In the thick of spooky season? There’s no better way to celebrate than a horror movie marathon. And somewhere between Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and The Exorcist, with a giant tub of popcorn and a double-helping of earth-crumbling screams… do you ever stop to think about the titles of these scary movies we love so much? Well, you know we do—we’re so obsessed with words it’s …
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a time to celebrate the contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) to the culture and history of America. For those who are not AAPI, this observance month also comes with the serious responsibility to acknowledge some of the complexities of these terms and consider better ways to use them. Recently in the US, there …
![List of words in white outline, with central word in bold purple font, on lilac background: “pseudonym, synonym, caconym, inaptonym [in bold], metonym, backronym, retronym"](https://www.dictionary.com/e/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20220426_NYM_800x800-380x380.png)
We love to look at words, and today the name of the game is words that end in -nym. The ending -nym or, most often, -onym is a combining form from Greek that means “name.” Apparently, we love naming names because there are a whole bunch of words that end in -nym. Some of these words are pretty common, but we managed to find quite …
We’ve created these Homework Help articles, organized by category and reviewed by our lexicographers, to help with any and all online schooling. Take a look! Dictionary.com recently launched a new type of content that appears on our definition pages for select terms that students mainly come across during homework assignments. So, fittingly, we’ve called these articles “Homework Help”! Below, we’ve categorized them by subject to …
Tensions are high on the Korean Peninsula. The aggression by North Korea on the South has captured the world’s attention and raised a number of questions about Korea’s history, names, and geography. Prior to 1910, Korea was a kingdom. Then, from 1910 to 1945, the country was under Japanese rule. At the end of World War II, the country was divided into two occupational zones along the …
