|
|
May 2005Language LinksThe Web is rich in sites devoted to language, and each month our editors will share a few of their favorites with you. See this month's picks! June 2005Language LinksLooking for linguistic fun on the Web? We can point you to a couple of neat sites, one with new words and the other with old ones. August 2005Language LinksMerriam-Webster was pleased this summer to receive a visit from members of the Dictionary Society of North America. The visit reminded us that readers of Word.com might like to visit the DSNA Web site (http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dsna/). At the site you will find information about the society, back issues of the DSNA newsletter, and a nice collection of interesting links. November 2005Language LinksThe web holds plenty of lists posted by word-lovers. Why not let these collections of homonyms (here and here) or this one of heteronyms (here) inspire a list or two of your own? If you see any good ones, they left out, let us know at comments@word.com. January 2006Language LinksIf all this language stuff is getting to be too much for you, maybe it’s time to switch to animal noises. Here are some links to help. February 2006Language LinksFans of the rebus—a representation of words or syllables by pictures of objects or by symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound—can find plenty of such riddles online. Here’s a sampling. March 2006Language LinksReady to keep celebrating the wearin' o' the green? Why not teach yourself a wee bit of Irish? Click here to find out how.
April 2006Language LinksLooking for some help with writing? The Web can help. Try these links. May 2006Language LinksWhat's in a name? Maybe more than you think. Here are a few links that let you explore the question. June 2006Language LinksEven the greenest thumbed gardeners may not know the botanical names of their favorite growing things. The Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project has been working to promote "nomenclatural stability . . . by establishing clear typifications . . . for each Linnaean plant name" and a little playing at that website yields a fine crop of data. Want something a little less complicated? Try digging into the roots of botanical names. Is sending flowers to a loved one more your level of gardening? Then you might be curious about what that bouquet of flowers signifies. Forget "friendship" versus "true love"; would you believe "stupidity; thoughtfulness" and "welcome to a stranger"? September 2006Language LinksBack-to-school spells back to spelling for some students. It's easy to find spelling lists and tips for spelling online. October 2006Language LinksDo you take your word play seriously? Do you like really tough puzzles? Then maybe you're ready for the world of "recreational linguistics." Check out http://www.wordways.com and find out. November 2006Language LinksWe'll close out this year's newsletter with a look at the lowest of the low: puns. You can find plenty of wordplay at these sites: - http://www.pundefined.com (hosting more than 1,000 daffy definitions)
- http://www.punoftheday.com (complete with ratings and biographies of funny folks)
January 2007Language LinksResolving to have a bit of fun with language in 2007? Try browsing these Web sites. February 2007Language LinksFebruary is for staying warm, whether it's with loved ones, by enjoying the great outdoors, or by cranking up the brain and trying out a few new Web sites. March 2007Language LinksWhat is the most beautiful word in the English language? The short answer is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The longer answer includes reflections of a professional word-watcher and a paragraph collecting references to the opinions of various writers. Interested in contributing your thoughts on the most beautiful word in our language? Send them to us at comments@word.com and we'll post a few responses in a future issue of Word.com. April 2007Language LinksIn honor of National Poetry Month, we present two sites for word (and poetry) lovers. www.rhymezone.com allows would-be poets to type in a word in search of a rhyme (its results are broken out by syllables). If appreciating already-written poems is more your style, check out the Academy of American Poets' www.poets.org. Poems are searchable by theme, by keyword, by author, by title, or by movement, including among others, Augustan and surrealism. May 2007Language LinksThis month marks 50 years of Merriam-Webster's sponsorship of the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee. In addition to testing yourself daily at our own Spelling Quiz http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/spquiz.pl and exploring the games available at our Premium Word Game site, http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/game/index.html, why not test yourself (and everyone in your family) this Bee Season with a series of quizzes http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/humanities/english/spelling_bee.html? June 2007Language LinksLooking for the right words for that graduation or wedding card? In need of an apt quotation? Maybe we can help. September 2007Language LinksAfter pundit Bill O'Reilly cautioned viewers not to be Pecksniffian in their comments, the adjective Pecksniffian rose in the rankings of the most looked-up words. Those looking for the origin of the word learned that it came from the name of a character, Seth Pecksniff, in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens. If you're interested in other words based on names of people or characters, try these sites. October 2007Language LinksOctober 23 is United Nations Day, honoring the day in 1945 that the UN Charter took effect. The UN is to be lauded for drawing the attention of the world to the plight of languishing languages in danger of extinction; a number of Web sites continue the work. January 2008Language LinksPeter Mark Roget was born January 18, 1779. Of the many (various, myriad) ways a person might mark the birth of the man whose name is associated with the thesaurus, exploring online versions and technological spinoffs of Roget's work seems just about right. February 2008Language LinksThe 31st annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament will be held in Brooklyn at the end of the month. The weekend-long gathering features competition by divisions, social gatherings of fellow puzzlers, and prizes galore. Cross that you won't be making it to the tourney? You can play along at home for a small fee, read up on some history and conventions of puzzle construction or study up a bit for next year's competition. March 2008Language LinksEach March, for the past 11 years, the National Education Association has sponsored Read Across America Day. Its goal: to inspire children to read. Need a little inspiration? The Web is rich in book lists for everyone, from the youngest reader to the retiree looking to catch up on what he or she might have missed. May 2008Language LinksWriter, illustrator, and nonsense versifier extraordinaire Edward Lear was born May 12, 1812. Lear is remembered for popularizing the limerick, the usually humorous five-line verse. Need some help writing a limerick? Try this site for a thorough explanation on just how it's done. Want to learn by example? Check out Lear's verses. And all are invited to contribute to an ambitious online dictionary in limerick form. June 2008Language LinksWith school out, we're sure the college-bound are taking advantage of summer to brush up on their vocabulary. Interested in getting a head start on the rest of the class? Play around with these sites from Michigan State University for a review of classical prefixes, roots, and suffixes. September 2008Language LinksSome favorite mondegreens appear on www.Merriam-Webster.com as well as elsewhere on the Web. Gavin Edwards, author of 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy And Other Misheard Lyrics, has collected some rock 'n' roll mondegreens. The Language Corner at the Columbia Journalism Review features some non-musical mondegreens. San Francisco Gate columnist Jon Carroll has been promoting and collecting mondegreens for years. And foreign language mondegreens can be found on YouTube. October 2008Language LinksNoah Webster, the father of the American dictionary, was born 250 years ago this month, on October 16, 1758. You can follow the historical development of old-fashioned English dictionaries the new-fashioned way. Browse Webster's original 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. Or see Dr. Samuel Johnson's groundbreaking 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language. And the book considered to be the first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words, published by Robert Cawdrey in 1604, is now also available online. January 2009Language LinksThe British Museum first opened to the public in January 1759. Two hundred fifty years later, the Museum remains dedicated to fostering an international community of inquiry and research. In that spirit, we pass along some links to help you puzzle out the differences between British English and American English. A very basic British-to-American English comparison is available at English-Zone.com. Or see the comprehensive searchable linguistic corpora of British and American English offered by Brigham Young University. (Definitions not included.) And the CoolSlang.com Web site provides definitions and examples of British slang (and other languages too) for the English speaker. March 2009Language LinksThe folks at the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar have proclaimed March 4th National Grammar Day. If you've already marched forth and proclaimed yourself a grammar lover, you might want to check out their Web site, with links to more than three dozen grammar blogs, collections of headlines, and grammar tips. Interested in more on grammar and usage? Discussions of usage controversies can be found on Paul Brian's Web site and the University of Pennsylvania's Language Log. Want more still? See our book Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage. April 2009Language LinksAccording to the folks at Poets.org, April was chosen for National Poetry Month at least in part to lessen the effects of T.S. Eliot's dubbing the fourth the "cruelest month." The folks at Poets.org also found a way to credit Chaucer and Edna St. Vincent Millay in the selection process. Additionally, Shakespeare's birthday is in April. You can read more about National Poetry Month and see this year's poster, which features another famous line by Eliot. Still want more poetry? You can find more than 300,000 poems at www.poemhunter.com — perfect for the second national Poem in Your Pocket Day. September 2009Language LinksOver the summer, an innovative fundraising idea by the Noah Webster House and West Hartford Historical Society received national attention. Make Your Mark encourages supporters to carve graffiti into the museum’s wooden classroom desks to give them an authentic look. It seems that schoolchildren of the late 18th and early 19th century were likely to leave their marks on their desks, just as modern kids are. Noah Webster himself wrote: "When I was a schoolboy, the greatest part of the scholars did not employ more than an hour in a day, either in writing or in reading; while five hours...was spent in idleness, in cutting tables and benches to pieces…" The museum will even give you a knife to do the carving! October 2009Language LinksOctober 16 is Dictionary Day, in honor of lexicographer Noah Webster, who was born October 16, 1758. Webster's 19th century dictionaries helped establish the notion of American English. Two centuries later, dictionaries are a part of American life. Celebrate Dictionary Day with a look at two very unusual and engaging modern sorts of dictionaries. Merriam-Webster's own Visual Dictionary is available for free online at http://visual.merriam-webster.com/. It can change the way you think about reference: you have to organize your thoughts according to domains of knowledge (such as Sports & Games, Food & Kitchen, or Animal Kingdom) and then narrow your search to the specific object you seek. For a more contemplative and strictly verbal approach, check out the picture painted at www.visuwords.com. This near-dictionary – built on Princeton University’s trademarked Wordnet – puts words in a visual setting, showing derivations, participles, and associations between words. It's endlessly fascinating for word lovers. November 2009Language Links: Ask the EditorOur editors have begun a series of short online videos featuring discussions about dictionaries and language. Facts about word histories, grammar, spelling, and usage are all a part of the popular Ask the Editor series. You can see them all here. January 2010Language LinksWith the page finally turned on 2009, language lovers (including those at Merriam-Webster) announced the word or phrase that best represents the year just ended. Then there are the words of the decade: Slate's Ron Rosenbaum presented one overview of catchphrases of the decade, while members of the American Dialect Society, which claims to be the "longest-running vote of its kind in the Anglophone world" voted on both the Word of the Year and the Word of the Decade. Finally, there are those words that annoy. Every year since 1976, Michigan's Lake Superior State University has released its helpful recommendation, a List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. April 2010Language LinksNational Grammar Day came and went last month. The date? March 4th – a call to action, in case you miss the reference. Keep the humor going with a look at few grammar cartoons (and note the first is a webcomic). May 2010Language LinksLast month, after poachers killed 150 vicuñas in the highlands of Peru, vicuña climbed to the Top 10 for a few days. The vicuña was considered unusual enough to merit a spot on The Phrontistery's List of Unusual Words for Animals. Interested in a blog with some photos of odd-looking critters? After that, a list of all mammal species known to zoologists might be of interest. The Smithsonian Institution offers this jaw-dropping list to get you started. June 2010Language LinksAfter nine rounds in the finals, Anamika Veeramani won the 83rd Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 4, 2010. The word that she successfully spelled in the ninth round to confirm her victory was stromuhr – a medical word for "a rheometer designed to measure the amount and speed of blood flow through an artery." (Rheometer takes its name from rheo meaning current or flow + the meter that measures). Interested in words from the semifinal and final rounds of this year's Bee? Interested in words that stumped or in some winning words from Bees gone by? Finally, here's a page of study tips for would-be spellers. September 2010Language LinksInterest in refudiate reminds us of the eggcorn. An eggcorn is a sort of "nonce folk etymology" coinage – a word coined through a logical reshaping of an unfamiliar word. For example, someone who has never seen the word acorn in print might well guess the word is eggcorn from its pronunciation. Eggcorns, unlike malapropisms, make sense. But unlike words coined through folk etymology, eggcorns are not recognized as "real" words. (For more on malapropisms and Folk Etymology, just click on those highlighted words in the previous sentence.) For a list of common eggcorns, check out the Eggcorn Database. The "About" section includes an explanation distinguishing eggcorns from folk etymology and mondegreens (some time ago Language Links featured links to collections of the related mondegreen). November 2010Language LinksAs Americans gather around the Thanksgiving table, many families will steer clear of conversations about politics and religion. What's left to talk about? Food! The food dictionary at Epicurious.com defines more than 4,000 entries of culinary terms for adventurous epicures. If you prefer to use your smart phone to locate information, you'll eat up this app called the Foodict Gourmet Food Dictionary, which features 2,100 terms you may encounter as you dine around the world. January 2011Language LinksAt year's end, the "top ten" lists proliferate in every cultural category that can be itemized. Many "words of the year" lists are offered by publishers and pundits, each with a different focus and method. Here's a recap of the annual wordfest from around the Internet – starting with our own Word of the Year -- the most looked-up words at our Online Dictionary that serve as a summary of a year's worth of vocabulary curiosity. We were heartened to see that when The Washington Post invited readers to select a word of the year, Merriam-Webster's selection won top honors. Taking a different approach, The Wall Street Journal analyzed which words rose from obscurity in 2009 to find popularity on its pages in 2010: the results are found here. Geoff Nunberg, of National Public Radio's Fresh Air, chose his own word of the year to reflect the zeitgeist. Finally, The American Dialect Society voted in its word choice: app. April 2011Language LinksApril marks the birth (and death) anniversary of William Shakespeare and is also National Poetry Month. Interested in reading up on the life and times of William Shakespeare online? This page leads to a wealth of information on the man, his world, and his works – including a helpful glossary. Be sure to check out the quizzes. You can search the text of the plays and poetry easily here, making research about Shakespeare's use of language a snap. Details about the plays, including language study, performance practice, and life in England during the time of Shakespeare, are all subjects of videos produced by the Folger Shakespeare library. In a lighter vein, see Hugh Laurie portray Shakespeare, reluctantly editing his most famous speech with Rowan Atkinson as a Renaissance-era producer. May 2011Language LinksNeed a few minutes of fun with words? You can test your vocabulary at two Web sites that challenge your knowledge of words and meanings. See if you're up to the challenge. The United Nations World Food Programme site features 60 levels of vocabulary questions, and for every correct response, the site's sponsors donate 10 grains of rice to the world's hungry. The quiz on this site is designed to help users improve their vocabulary. With 40,000 quiz questions, there are plenty of tests to expand your horizon of words. June 2011Language LinksWord.com takes a break for summer, but we'll leave you with a few poems to tide you over until September. For June, we offer James Russell Lowell's classic "What is so rare as a day in June?" (scroll down). Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" is appropriate to celebrate Independence Day (in video form). And, for August, a poem by Albert Garcia entitled "August Morning." September 2011Language LinksThey say a picture is worth a thousand words, and if you think you have the vocabulary to describe what you see, try Name That Thing, the addictive new quiz at Merriam-Webster.com. If seeing is believing, check out this astonishing portrait of Noah Webster the size of a cornfield. It's located near the Merriam-Webster headquarters in Massachusetts, and can be visited until the end of October. October 2011Language LinksThe blog Brain Pickings presents "Words About Words: 5 Essential Books on Language" with some wonderful commentary as well as video. Linguist Steven Pinker's talk is sure to make you think in new ways about English (a sample: "The verb is the chassis of the sentence"). Also profiled: Authors talk trash about other authors in The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition. The insufficiencies of language are discussed in In Other Words. And the rich world of idioms from other languages is the subject of I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears (watch the short video using incomprehensible idioms translated from other languages to shake up your language instinct). November 2011Language LinksIn mid-October, the Scrabble world got both racy and competitive, when one player accused another of secreting a G tile on his person and demanded that officials at the World Scrabble Championship strip-search the accused. The officials refused, the game went on, and the accused contestant won the match (but not the championship). Interested in tips on improving your Scrabble game without impugning the opposition? Check out Hasbro's Scrabble Tips and Tools for word lists, word-builder search tools, and the game itself. For background on which words are playable and some behind-the-scenes controversies from the world of competitive Scrabble, this article in the New York Times by Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak, gives some perspective on this venerable word game. January 2012Language LinksThe start of the New Year coincides with numerous bird counts in the United States and Canada. People interested in counting words (not birds) can do so in a number of ways – and in ways that have nothing to do with migratory patterns. Most word processing programs offer writers a tool for counting words in a given piece of text, but what about counting the variety of words you use in your own writing? Check www.wordcounter.com to measure the variety of words you use in a given piece of writing. You can also assess the political ideology embedded in a document or article by analyzing word choice. Looking for some analysis in your word count? Check the "text readability" of a piece of writing at www.standards-schmandards.com, which bills itself as "a pragmatic approach to web accessibility," and which allows you to apply a grade level (or readability level) to a given piece of writing. |