Every year since 1986, the United States has observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the third Monday in January. The national holiday honors a man who not only was an inspirational civil rights activist during the 1960s, but also one of the greatest orators of our time. King wrote five books during his lifetime, and at one point was estimated to deliver up to …
The Democratic candidates squared off this week in their second, two-night debate in Detroit, Michigan, ahead of their party primaries. As the candidates made their pitch to voters for why they should top the Democratic ticket against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, we were watching some of the standout or hot-button words they were using—and that drove viewers to look them up in …
Fascist and Nazi: these two words loom large in the history books and in heated conversations about politics—conversations that have far outlasted the regimes that originally embraced them. For many of us, the words fascist and Nazi bring to mind the worst dictators and crimes against humanity. But as these ideologies make the news in 2020, used especially in the context of a growing concern about …
Here’s an uncontroversial statement: books have the power to teach us about people, places, cultures, and ideas—especially ones that are different or unfamiliar to us. For young people in particular, a book can be a window to the world beyond their everyday surroundings. But recently, a growing number of political leaders, school officials, and parents in several US states have worked to remove or ban …
In our latest update to Dictionary.com, we added more than 300 new words and definitions, and revised over 1,700 entries. Many of the newly added terms are pulled straight from the headlines like Daesh, intersectionality, warmist, woke, and Zika virus. Several of the new words relate directly to the media, including lamestream, presstitute, and hot take. Mainstream cultural conversations give Dictionary.com’s lexicographers an endless supply …
As the George Floyd protests have grown and spread, many activists have been calling to defund the police. Whether chanted in demonstrations or posted as hashtags on social media, the phrase defund the police has proven to be a forceful rallying cry. People are listening. But, people are also asking questions. What does it mean, exactly, to defund the police? Indeed, it seems many people …
Held on March 8, International Women’s Day celebrates the progress women have made over the last century, and the inspiring women who helped make that progress happen. From the suffragist movement of the 1800s to the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, women have used the power of language and oration to inspire countless people. Early inspiration: the Enlightenment Early feminism was heavily influenced by the …