In her novels, Jane Austen (1775–1817) scrutinized the ways that social codes and class place constraints on individuals and relationships. Her own use of language, however, was anything but constrained. It was so playful and inventive—like tittupy, or “bouncing all around,” which a character uses to describe a rickety carriage in Northanger Abbey. While she may not have exactly coined words like tittupy, Austen’s books …
In parts of the US, supper and dinner are used interchangeably to refer to the evening meal, but they’re not exactly synonyms. What do these words mean? Dinner, which dates back to the late 1200s, refers to the main meal of the day—historically, a meal served midday for many peoples. The term comes from the Middle English diner, which, via French, goes back to a …
Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is our neighbor, and it has long captivated the human mind and spirit. Think of Martians, a go-to word for extraterrestrial life since science-fiction imagined inhabitants there in the late 19th century. But, how did Mars it get its name? Who is the mythological Mars? The planet Mars is named after the Roman god of war, Mars, considered …
On Saturday, August 3, a gunman in El Paso, Texas, took the lives of 22 people and injured many more. The next morning, another shooter claimed 9 victims in Dayton, Ohio. As people were processing these massacres, many turned to the dictionary. We observed lookups for one term, stochastic terrorism, surge 63,389% on August 4, as compared to the week prior. Topping searches on https://t.co/OeJELgy3YL …
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 …
What rhymes with orange? Orange rhymes with Blorenge (a mountain in Wales) and sporange (a technical word for a sac where spores are made). Of course, if you want to write a rhyming poem about oranges, the scientific or geographic research involved might be a little tough. What rhymes with silver? While we’re at it, while silver hangs on to the same rumor, it actually rhymes with Wilver (a nickname) and chilver (a ewe lamb). …
It’s time for another roundup of the words that got our trending word ticker atop our homepage ticking this past week. In this batch, we offer a “stirring” mix of 10 terms that trended (i.e., significantly increased by percentage measured against searches on the the previous day). We begin with our top three lookups. Then, we’ll highlight some words that are notable due to the …
What do spivvy, smuggery, stingo, and schlemiel have in common? Sure, they begin with the letter S. But what’s more, they are also some of the leading lookups on Dictionary.com since July 8. Since our introduction of it in our last trending writeup, our ticker has been tirelessly scrolling across our homepage. And, we’ve continued to watch. So, let’s get started with our top five …
Did the dictionary … get it wrong?! We once featured the word comeuppance as our Word of the Day. Comeuppance, as we define it, means “deserved reward or just deserts, usually unpleasant.” More than a few of our brilliant and devoted users, wrote in to inform us that there was a typo in the definition: just deserts should be just desserts. Was an S left out of …
We’re already halfway through 2019, which means we had to look back at our word search data! We love data, OK. Plus, the search trends on Dictionary.com from April through June 2019 did not disappoint. Politics, of course, drove many of the searches. And, uh, a quick warning: there are some references to adult content ahead. (Hey, we don’t control the words, folks. We document …
The terms motherland and fatherland both refer to one’s native country, one’s country of origin, or the home of one’s ancestors. So, what’s the difference between motherland and others fatherland? What are the origins of motherland and fatherland? Whether a particular group uses (their language’s equivalent of, if they have one) motherland or fatherland is a matter of culture, tradition, or, in some instances, personal preference. In …
You may have noticed a nifty new tool scrolling across the top of the homepage of Dictionary.com. But, what makes it tick? What is the trending word ticker, and how does it work? Rather than reading out stock prices, our ticker pulls real-time data on daily word search trends in our dictionary. The percentage is a measurement of how many searches there are for a …
