The latest update to Dictionary.com includes several new definitions at the entries for ghost and ghosting. The noun ghost has been around a very long time, since before 900, when Old English was spoken. Originally it referred to the soul of a dead person or a disembodied spirit, and this meaning is still in use. […]
Read more »On January 8th, 2016, approximately 300 linguists crammed into a room to vote on the American Dialect Society’s 2015 Word of the Year. From microaggression to man bun to emoji with x-rated connotations, dozens of lexical items were debated, but only one could take home the ultimate honor of Word of the Year. This year […]
Read more »Since 1990, the American Dialect Society has held a Word of the Year vote, which is open to the public. This year’s vote takes place on January 8, 2016 in Washington DC. Over the past few weeks, linguists have been discussing nominations for various categories, and the ADS website has a nice roundup of 2015 Word […]
Read more »Dictionary.com’s latest update contains many terms ushered into existence because of technological advancements. Two of these new entries, deep web and dark web, are so technical in nature that we came across a lot of confusion as to what they actually mean in our research. More tech-savvy publications generally have a disclaimer when discussing the […]
Read more »While Kim Kardashian was busy “breaking the Internet” with her controversial photoshoot for Paper in November of 2014, New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde was teaching the world—or at least her Twitter and Tumblr followers—about a new slang use of the word mom. These three little letters tweeted out by Lorde in response to Kardashian’s cover photo caused […]
Read more »Disney’s new live-action Cinderella, directed by Kenneth Branagh, is the latest of countless adaptations of this cherished fairy tale. The Cinderella that English speakers know and love can be traced to the French story Cendrillon, first published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, though Chinese and Greek versions of this classic tale go back to the […]
Read more »#jesuischarlie, #RupertsFault, and #SOTUBURN: 2015 has already produced hashtags that have sparked national and international conversations. But are hashtags really words? At the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society in early January, linguists and word enthusiasts vote on the Word of the Year. This year, the overall winner of this vote was the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. Though […]
Read more »Over the last couple of years, the term bae has achieved widespread usage. While the noun form has been around for over 10 years, adjectival and verbal uses, along with other related forms, have more recently started popping up to describe the people and things we love, or at least like-like. Twitter, in particular, is rife […]
Read more »Even the least tech-savvy lexicographer understands that technology is a robust source of new words. As technologies move from the realm of science fiction into our everyday realities, new words and meanings spring up around them. While it is expected that names for these new technologies and the words describing our interaction with them are […]
Read more »In 2007 film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl in an attempt to classify Kirsten Dunst’s role in Elizabethtown. He first described this stock romantic character as a woman who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite […]
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