It’s one of the oldest words in the English language. One that’s fundamental not just to our vocabulary but to who we are as humans. And yet it’s a word that continues to be a source of intense personal importance and societal debate. It’s a word that’s inseparable from the story of 2022. Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year is woman. woman [ woom–uhn ] noun …
It’s one of the oldest words in the English language. One that’s fundamental not just to our vocabulary but to who we are as humans. And yet it’s a word that continues to be a source of intense personal importance and societal debate. It’s a word that’s inseparable from the story of 2022. Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year is woman. woman [ woom–uhn ] noun …
Fashion is a major form of art and innovation. New looks and styles are being created all the time, but sometimes those new styles have names that aren’t so chic. The fashion world is full of funny portmanteaus, or word combinations that take the names of two well-known items and mash them together into something brand new and, well, sometimes a bit silly. Ever heard …
You’ve probably seen the hashtags on TikTok: cottagecore, royalcore, normcore. It’s clear they’re associated with a specific aesthetic and that people are major fans, but what’s the deal with every social trend suddenly getting its own unique -core name? Fandoms naming themselves isn’t a new thing—just ask Taylor Swift’s Swifties or Beyonce’s Beyhive. But the -core trend takes the idea of fandom and applies it …
Language is constantly evolving, but there’s one type of language that so often changes even faster than the rest: slang. Every generation has its own unique slang words, and these terms seem to spring up faster than many people can keep up with. The popularity of TikTok and other social media trends has only made it easier for new slang to take hold, and if …
2021 was a year defined by the many ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the polarization of 2020—and the various ways we continue to grapple with them. The vastness of such a year could never be fully summarized with a single word. But there is one word that’s intertwined with so many of the things we’ve experienced in 2021: allyship, our 2021 Word of the …
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 …
The protests against racism and police brutality, spurred by George Floyd—a Black man who was killed after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes—have expanded in size and scope across the entire world. The protests have, in turn, spurred the beginnings of everything from deep, uncomfortable reflections to institutional change and reform. And Dictionary.com has seen significant search …
