After nearly 5,000 (!) submissions, three finalists, more than 3,000 votes, and some seriously scary sci-fi: it’s official. You have chosen the winner of the 2022 Haunting Hooks Scary Story Opener Writing Contest! For our second annual edition of the contest, we again challenged contestants to write a captivating opening to a scary story in 50 words or less. This year, there was a theme: …
It’s safe to say we all like feeling loved, but do we all feel and express love in the exact same ways? Not necessarily, according to the experts. If you’ve spent any time online or interacting with pop culture, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about love languages, and one love language specifically: words of affirmation. These buzzy terms have been on our collective …
English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and you’ll find its more than 1 billion speakers just about everywhere. (It’s fun to note that scientists have even taken the English language to Antarctica!) But there are two particular groups of English speakers we’ll focus on in this article—and they are the ones who live on both sides of the Atlantic …
If you take a tour of the English language, you can find some unbelievably long words like antidisestablishmentarianism, pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism, and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. As long as these words are, they have got nothing on the longest words you’ll find in some of the world’s languages. If you find that hard to believe, you should know that the list you are about to read includes words like kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan …
The words recurring and reoccurring are both used to indicate that something is happening again. But which word is the right one to say that something keeps happening over and over? In this article, we’ll define recurring and reoccurring, explain the difference between them, and provide examples of how they’re typically used in sentences. Reoccurring and recurring can both be used as a verb and …
When addressing strangers, authority figures, and in formal situations, it is considered polite to use an honorific, or title, to address them. The most frequently used honorifics are gendered male or female, which may not always be appropriate. In this article, we are going to review the most common honorifics, the alternative Mx., and how and when to use these titles. The most commonly used …
Spanish is the second-most spoken language in the United States, after English. With so many Spanish-speakers, it is no surprise that there is a lot of crossover between the two. There are Spanish words adopted into English and English words that have been adapted into Spanish, and often people will use these two languages in combination or interchangeably (sometimes this is known as Spanglish). Let’s …
Mr. and Mrs.: What do they stand for? The contractions Mr. and Mrs. are short for Mister and Missus/Missis. These contractions, like their longer forms, are used in etiquette to show respect to men and women. Mr. and Mrs. are pronounced the same as their longer forms: Mr. is pronounced as [ mis-ter ] and Mrs. is pronounced as [ mis-iz ] or [ miz-iz …
It’s always fun to learn new things and learning a cool new word can scratch that itch of curiosity you might have. Speaking of itch, you may be wondering what medical term is used to refer to itchiness or really itchy skin. Itching to solve this mystery? We have just the educational aloe vera you are looking for—and you’ll learn a few more dermatological terms …
Antiwork, bachelorx party, 45, Ohtani rule, pawternity leave, Zelenskyy. As ever, there is great variety in the new terms and meanings just added to Dictionary.com. by Nick Norlen, Senior Editor, and Heather Bonikowski, Lexicographer Let’s set things straight: a word doesn’t become a “real word” when we add it to the dictionary. It’s actually the other way around: we add a word to the dictionary …
The pumpkin spice flavor used in coffee drinks and so many other foods popular in fall is typically a mixture of spices (or flavorings) including cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and sometimes allspice. Does pumpkin spice contain pumpkin? It’s called pumpkin spice not because it has pumpkin in it but because it’s the spice mixture traditionally used to flavor pumpkin pie and other pumpkin-based baked goods …
It’s a commonly misused phrase, and it’s also commonly misspelled. Is it per se or per say? The confusion might be due to the phrase’s Latin origin, which is a big hint as to which spelling is the right one. In this article, we’ll reveal the correct spelling of the term, define it, explain its Latin origin and meaning, and provide examples of how it …