By Ashley Austrew, Journalist and Writer There are so many unique ways to show love to teachers, and this year they deserve it more than ever. As we approach Teachers’ Day, which you might also know as National Teachers’ Day or Teacher Appreciation Day, on May 7, you’re probably thinking about what special presents you can give to the educators in your life to celebrate …
Chances are, when you started reading you encountered plenty of new words. That’s great for you—you were learning, after all—but here’s the catch. Your skill at pronouncing these words didn’t necessarily keep up with your reading skills, leading to some funny mishaps. Did colonel’s pronunciation confuse you? What about choir? Or hors’d’oeuvres? (Did you try “horse divorce” or “hers dervs”?) This might seem silly now, but …
Are you always caught with your nose in a good book? Do you feel close enough to fictional characters that you consider them your friends? Well, chances are you’re an eager reader. We don’t blame you. Books are often how we learn new words and understand how to apply them in everyday conversations. Sometimes, we read so many new words (and don’t hear them spoken) …
Roses are red. Violets are blue. We have a poetry quiz, and we’ll share it with you! Do you consider yourself a savant in stanzas or a master of meter? Prove it by answering questions about these and other poetic words in our quiz on poetry terms! (Hint: you can brush up on some of the required terminology with our introductory poetry terms if you …
A total solar eclipse doesn’t happen every day. The sun, moon, and Earth have busy schedules that make it hard for them all to perfectly align. So, you’ll want to be prepared when a total solar eclipse is on the horizon. To ensure you’re ready for the 2024 solar eclipse, we’ve prepared a printable decoder that will guide you through the dazzling show via key …
As Leo Tolstoy wrote in the classic Anna Karenina, “spring is the time of plans and projects.” To put it more bluntly, spring is a time of new growth, new experiences, and, in most of the world, temperamental weather. To encourage your personal growth during this season of change, why not try out some of these sophisticated vocabulary terms related to spring? verdurous Verdurous is …
Our universe is unfathomably huge and getting bigger all of the time, according to the Big Bang model and the theory of universe expansion. That’s a pretty cool concept and term, right? As the theory goes, dark energy (more on this later) is causing the universe to continually stretch itself. Studying the universe introduces us to some fascinating concepts in general: black holes, rogue planets, …
If you haven’t heard, the sport of pickleball is kind of a big dill lately. Many athletes relish the chance to play this fun game taking over the nation. If you’re unfamiliar with the game or have never even heard of it before, you’re likely to be confused by some of the unique lingo used by players. Needless to say, this is quite the tricky …
As the saying goes, there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. This saying dates all the way back to 1716, and the word tax is even older than that. Tax, meaning “a sum of money demanded by a government,” comes from the Latin taxare, meaning “censure, charge, tax with a fault,” and dates to around the 1200s. For centuries, taxes have been …
Some people seem to be born with a special intuition to always know things before they happen. Others seem to have a special gift allowing them to see ghosts or talk to the dead. But are people with these unique talents psychics or mediums? And can the words psychic and medium be interchanged? The answer is… sometimes; psychic and medium aren’t always synonyms, and despite both …
For years, we here at Dictionary.com have been working on a pretty ambitious project. We’ve been compiling a list of words that people use in the English language, and for each word that we add to the list, we write a few sentences about what it means. (A neat thing is that some of the words mean more than one thing.) A cool feature about …
For pranksters and mischievous older siblings all around the world, April Fools’ Day, also called All Fools’ Day, is as eagerly anticipated as Christmas. After all, what other holiday encourages you to think up practical jokes and fool’s errands, from swapping your spouse’s keys to tricking your friend into thinking their car got towed? (Not cool, Steve.) But how did this odd, prank-centric holiday come …