A cake can turn any common gathering into a celebration. Simply offering cake can turn an event into a party, and the word itself evokes happy memories of birthdays, weddings, and other festivities (though the phrase let them eat cake has quite a different connotation). Yet what you should expect to see when someone says there will be cake is somewhat up in the air … …
While enjoying a dip in the ocean, there’s one thing you definitely don’t want to see: a shark fin in the water. The same thing can be said about a dip in a lake or pond—only the creature you want to avoid happens to be a massive reptile instead. But is the animal who glides along the swampy waters with just its eyes showing a …
pandemic: life upended, language transformed 2020 has been, well, a lot. At Dictionary.com, the task of choosing a single word to sum up 2020—a year roiled by a public health crisis, an economic downturn, racial injustice, climate disaster, political division, and rampant disinformation—was a challenging and humbling one. But at the same time, our choice was overwhelmingly clear. From our perspective as documenters of the …
We want to hear from you! We can’t predict what will unfold next in this unprecedented year, but you can help us sum up what happened so far in 2020. We’ve chosen pandemic as our Word of the Year, based on data, trends, cultural events, and our work as a dictionary this year. But, what word would you choose to describe 2020? Trust us: We …
If you’ve woken up on New Year’s Day feeling as if you’d been hit by a truck, you may have sought a hangover remedy with an infamously odd name: the hair of the dog. Let’s take a look at where this name comes from. What does hair of the dog mean? A morning drink may be the last thing you want after a night of boozing, but that’s …
We love to talk about and compare the price of things. Maybe you remember the price of your favorite candy bar when you were a kid versus what its price is now. Or maybe you’ve had to take a good look at the cost of living in an expensive city. You’ve asked yourself, is it worth it? Can you afford it? When we start a new hobby …
First, is it season’s greetings or seasons greetings? There’s nothing like sitting down to fill out the holiday cards and realizing you’re not quite sure what to do with your apostrophe. Do you wish your friends and family “season’s greetings”? Or, should it be “seasons’ greetings”? Maybe you can just bypass that pesky punctuation altogether? Hey, if you’re sloppy enough, the smudged ink might just …
When you’re sad about the loss of a person, a pet, or even an item, it can feel like there are no words to describe those feelings. Emotions take over and melancholy sets in. But after that initial reaction, when the feelings start to subside, do you tell others you were grieving or bereaving that loss? Let’s explore the differences between these two mournful words. What does …
Separated by just one pesky letter, these two similar-sounding adjectives can be torturous to keep straight. Or is it tortuous? Let’s take a look at the definitions and applications of each. What does tortuous mean? Both torturous and tortuous come from the Latin verb torquēre meaning “to twist.” This derivation is easy to detect in the meaning of tortuous, defined as “full of twists, turns, or bends.” …
Every time another birthday rolls around, the thrills become fewer and the anxiety about aging becomes greater. But don’t let those landmark decade birthdays get you down! Now you can whip out a new word every 10 years to describe yourself. You may not have heard these words used very often, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important. Try saying one (or all) of them …
As with many legal and political terms, recuse and resign are often confused with each other. The differences between these terms are important to understand. What does recuse mean? To recuse means “to withdraw from performing legal duties because of potential bias or a conflict of interest.” This can apply to judges, jurors, lawyers, and so on, but it’s specific to the prejudice those individuals may exhibit. Although the …
Sunday is the first day of the week, and it’s a day of rest before the start of the typical work week in many Western cultures. For some Christians and Catholics, it’s also the designated day for people to attend religious services in their Sunday best. The English name for Sunday, however, has nothing to do with its importance on the religious calendar. Whereas Wednesday …