As flashy and fun as the terms selfie and binge-watch are, it’s important to keep in mind another, more business-casual buzzword of the 2010s: lean in. In fact, this term existed before Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg started using lean in to encourage women to embrace challenge and risk in the workplace. What is the traditional meaning of lean in? Traditionally lean in has been used in the …
The word twerk bounced its way into the universal consciousness of English speakers thanks to the controversial performance of Miley Cyrus at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. Only a few days later, Oxford Dictionaries Online announced its quarterly update, listing twerk among the new additions (additions that had been planned months before “Twerkgate”). This led to public outcry against making this term “official.” As lexicographers …
Whether speculating on the havoc it wreaks when it’s full or waxing poetic on the beauty of its glow, people love talking about the moon. This age-old fascination with our celestial satellite has resulted in a lexicon loaded with lunar-themed words, phrases, and meanings. What does moon mean? Consider the array of senses we have for the word moon itself. In addition to referencing our …
As Word of the Year decisions approach, the lexicography team at Dictionary.com has been reflecting on words that have risen in popularity this year. One such word is selfie. In case you’re unfamiliar with this term, selfie means “a photo that one takes of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam, especially for posting on a social-networking website.” Though self-portraits are far from a novel …
Do you ever feel so inspired by a good book that you want to sing? Many bands and recording artists have acted on that impulse by working elements of their favorite novels, short stories, or poems into their musical repertoires. Here are a few of our favorite salutes to literature in popular music. The Doors The band name The Doors is a nod to Aldous …
With every generation come cries that teenagers are destroying the language with their newfangled slang. The current grievance harps on the way casual language used in texts and instant messages inhibits kids from understanding how to write and speak “properly.” While amateur language lovers might think this argument makes sense, experts say this is not at all the case. In fact, linguists say teenagers, far …
Anarchy The word anarchy has held the negative connotations of lawlessness leading to disorder and chaos since the sixteenth century, but in 1840, the first self-proclaimed anarchist started to project a more positive sense of the word. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (pictured) wrote in his work What is Property? that, “property is robbery,” and that, “Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force …
Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus addressing her use of the word laying in her song “Get It Right.” The lyric in question: “I been laying in this bed all night long.” Before addressing the grammatical sin of “I been,” Sufjan explains that Miley should have used the word lying in place of laying. What’s the difference between lying and laying? …
American place names can sound pretty confusing even to native English speakers. From Philadelphia (Greek for “loving brother”) to Chicago (Algonquian Fox for “place of the wild onion”), the map of America is an etymological hodge-podge. For a clear example, take three adjacent states in New England. Vermont is an inverted, rough translation of the French for “green mountain,” mont vert. Massachusetts is derived from the name of …
“The pursuit of Happiness” was thought to be an unalienable right by the writers of the US Declaration of Independence. However, in 1776, the definition of happiness evoked a different meaning than it does today. When the framers of this historic document wrote about “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” what exactly did they mean by “happiness”? The term happiness comes from the Old Norse term …
You can like someone, and then you can LIKE-like someone. These two things, though they both involve liking, have different meanings. The first one could mean that you like a person as a friend or you have a crush on that person, depending on the context. However, the second type of like—the LIKE-like—unambiguously implies that you have a crush. What’s happening here when like is …
The word flair has been around in English for a long time—since the mid-14th century—however, the senses that most English speakers are familiar with did not enter English until much later. While the noun form of flair entered English from the Old French word of the same spelling, this term ultimately came from the Late Latin verb fragrare, which meant “to smell sweet.”