You’ve received the award of a lifetime, and you’ve been asked to attend a fancy presentation dinner. You want to convey your interest in the event and are ready to respond, “Yes, I’ll definitely be there!” But wait … should you say you’re planning to definitively be there? Which is it? Definitely or definitively? Before you move on to picking out your entree and getting all dressed …
by Ashley AustrewWhen you hear the phrases calling out and calling in, you probably picture someone taking a sick day at their job. And, there’s a whole lot of debate about which phrase you use when doing that. Twitter, go! The sniffles are affecting most people this year. If you have to miss work due to illness, do you call IN sick or call OUT …
There’s a fresh UFO hullabaloo, and that provides the perfect opportunity to encounter the origin of “flying saucer” and “UFO.” There are no alien autopsies, abductions or crop circles in these stories, but there is no shortage of weirdness. First, here’s the latest extraterrestrial extravaganza. A group of retired Air Force members and UFO researchers held a press conference claiming that aliens not only monitor, …
by Rory Gory Bisexual people make up 52 percent of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community, but in recent years, the words to describe the identity of someone who is attracted to more than one gender have become increasingly complex. As the conversation around gender identity has expanded, so, too, has the language to describe both gender and sexuality as well as the complex …
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 …
Weekends are when many Americans gather in their respective houses of worship and repeat the same word: amen. But, what does the word mean? And, why do people say it? The origins of amen Amen is commonly used after a prayer, creed, or other formal statement. It is spoken to express solemn ratification or agreement. It is used adverbially to mean “certainly,” “it is so,” …
Poor Dan is in a droop. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. What do these—admittedly very unusual—sentences have in common? They’re palindromes. Palin-what-in-the-what-now? What is a palindrome, and what does it mean? A palindrome is a word, sentence, verse, or even number that reads the same backward or forward. It derives from Greek roots that literally mean “running back” (palin is “again, back,” and dromos, “running.”) …
JSYK, we’ve added new words and definitions to the dictionary. Over 300 of them in 2019, in fact. This is one case, we think, where JOMO just doesn’t apply. We’re sure you’ve guessed by now that these additions include some new internet slang abbreviations, like JSYK (“just so you know”) and JOMO (“joy of missing out”), that reflect how technology is influencing modern life—and modern …
by Nick Norlen, Senior Editor Maybe it was inevitable. And perhaps it was obvious. But honestly, it’s hard not to love it. We asked the internet public to vote to determine The GWOAT—The Greatest Word Of All Time. After multiple rounds and nearly 14,000 votes, they chose… love. Allow us, the objective language observers, to be sentimental for a moment. We acknowledged up front that it’s …
If you had any doubt that 2010 was a complicated year, consider this: the five finalists for our People’s Choice Word of the Year were all fairly close contenders, and three of the words were multisyllabic mouthfuls. The top two entries were incredibly close – out of over 10,000 votes, the winner was only 40 votes ahead of the runner-up. The top five words, those …