Now that you’ve fully summerized, it’s time to get back into the work week and take the new Word of the Day Quiz! If the quiz doesn’t display, please try opening in the Chrome browser. Improve your vocabulary with our Visual Word of the Day videos. Not sure what some of the definitions of these words mean? We found some items (linked below) to help …
Code-switching means “the modifying of one’s speech, behavior, appearance, etc. to adapt to different sociocultural norms.” So why do we do it? Why do we code-switch? There are many reasons why we code-switch. The main reason, however, is actually quite simple: acceptance in varying social situations. It’s no secret that we instinctively fear being perceived as “the other,” or as different, or as an outsider. That’s a lonely …
Dictionary.com’s United States of Diversity by Taneesh KheraIn April, 2018 I traveled to India for a college friend’s wedding. When I came back, I read part of this essay to two friends, and we began to discuss borders and what they’ve become today. That conversation was inspiration for this episode, so grab a cushion and get comfortable for the United States of Diversity: Borders. Communication …
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 …
What is the difference between a while and awhile? Few word pairs capture the idiosyncrasies (“peculiar characteristics”) of the English language like a while and awhile do. Both of these terms are expressions of time, but one is written with a space while the other is one word. In fact, these two terms represent different parts of speech. The two-word expression a while is a noun phrase, consisting of the article …
In 2013, the Sunday Times outed J.K. Rowling as the author of the detective novel The Cuckoo’s Calling, published under her nom de plume Robert Galbraith. While devotees of Rowling quickly procured and binge-read her latest work, linguists and language lovers worldwide celebrated the computational analysis of the two scholars who helped reveal the true author of the book in question. How did experts figure …
From its humble beginnings as a Roman numeral to its eventual tenth position in the English alphabet, J has had quite a linguistic journey. When was J added to the alphabet? J is a bit of a late bloomer; after all, it was the last letter added to the alphabet. It is no coincidence that I and J stand side by side—they actually started out as the same …
Most of us know what the word lying means, but what happens when someone carefully skirts the truth instead of telling a bold-faced whopper? Politicians, in particular, are well-known for making use of equivocal language as a way of hiding their true actions. What other ways can we describe language that hides the truth? What is hyperbole? Tweens and teens tend to use hyperbole, otherwise …