Archives for the 'Vocabulary' Category

• 75 Synonyms for “Hard”
• 20 Pairs of One-Word and Two-Word Forms
• 50 Musical Terms Used in Nonmusical Senses
• 10 Types of Wordplay
• 100 Words for Facial Expressions
• 15 Big Little Words
• 75 Synonyms for “Angry”
• 50 Idioms About Talking
• 75 Synonyms for “Talk”
• Accidental Shifts in Meaning
• 40 Synonyms for “Lie”
• 25 Synonyms for “Story”
• The Word of the Year 2011
• 25 Adverbs That Get an “A”
• 85 Synonyms for “House”
• 50 Words for “Writing”
• A Couple of Notes About “Couple”
• 50 Diminutive Suffixes (and a Cute Little Prefix)
• 55 Synonyms for “Courage”
• 40 Synonyms for Praise
• These Are “-Some” Adjectives
• 55 Synonyms for “Criticize”
• 15 Words for Household Rooms, and Their Synonyms
• 50 Words with the Most Whimsical Prefix
• 35 Words Frequently Found in Compounds
• 25 Synonyms for “Beginner”
• 25 Synonyms for “Expression”
• Words About Feeling and Suffering
• 5 Words and Their Nonantonymic Antonyms
• 15 Terms for Forms and Types of Governance
• 15 Terms for Those Who Tell the Future
• 75 Contronyms (Words with Contradictory Meanings)
• Are New Words Right for Your Writing?
• 7 Rules for Identifying People by Place Names
• Take Care with Connotation
• Handle Popular Culture Terms with Care
• Terms About Courts and the Judicial System
• 10 Ethnic Terms
• Know Your Regional Vocabulary
• Slipping into Newspeak
• Military Ranks, Units and Weapons
• The Changing Uses of “Freak”
• One Pant, Two Pants?
• What Are the Mean, the Median, and the Mode?
• 50+ Words That Describe Animals (Including Humans)
• When Words Collide
• 5 Types of Eponyms
• Of Muscles, Mussels, and Mice
• The Difference Between Extortion and Blackmail
• Loanwords from 12+ Unexpected Languages
• What’s So Hard about “Docent”?
• Can You Craft New Words?
• Stay on the Map with New Geopolitical Names
• Draconian Implies Cruelty
• 50 Rhetorical Devices for Rational Writing
• 100 Whimsical Words
• 10 Latin Abbreviations You Might Be Using Incorrectly
• 100 Beautiful and Ugly Words
• Emphasis for Epithets and Personification
• 100 Mostly Small But Expressive Interjections
• 10 Words for Categories of Words
• Inhibit vs Prohibit
• Is “into” after “invade” really necessary?
• Sin is Bad
• “Blatantly” and “patently”
• “Rhubarb” is not just a Vegetable
• Clean out of spondulicks!
• Embezzlement, Peculation, and Connotation
• Expanded and Extended
• Cleave, Cleaver, and Clove
• Parley and Parlay
• Semi-, Demi-, and Hemi-
• What’s an “Ambigram”?
• “Despite” or “In Spite of”?
• Interpreters and Commentators
• Bits and Bytes
• 20 Computer Terms You Should Know
• Foiled Again!
• Loanwords and Calques
• Five Misleading Names
• One Die, Two Dice
• The Cardinal Connection
• The Curious History of “Bead”
• Vaccination and Baccalaureate
• Dictionaries and Lexicons
• Is that a Hapax Legomenon?
• Safety and Security
• Spasmodic
• Bunting and Bunting
• What Exactly is “Folk Etymology”?
• Confronting and Affronting
• A Blessing in Blood
• Aerial, Areal, and Ariel
• Curbs and Sidewalks
• The Difference Between “Shade” and “Shadow”
• Verbally and Orally
• Is She a “Lady” or a “Woman”?
• “Gratitude” or “Gratefulness”?
• “Nonce-words,” “For the Nonce,” and “Nonce”
• What’s a “Factoid”?
• Abroad and Overseas
• Normality and Normalcy
• Can a “Chimera” be Real?
• Difference between “Pressing” and “Ironing”
• Plumber and Related Words
• Imminent, Immanent, and Eminent
• Event and Occasion
• Submissions and Submittals
• Taking and Bringing
• Whaling May Result in Weals
• Portmanteau Words
• Shakespeare’s Vocabulary
• The Word is “Careless”
• How often is “bimonthly”?
• Do you “orient” yourself, or “orientate” yourself?
• 36 Poetry Terms
• What Color is “Wan”?
• Act of God and Vis Major
• How Much Is A “Billion”?
• The Many Meanings of “Sweat”
• Use of the word “Latest”
• Why “Noon” is no longer the “Ninth Hour”
• Meaning of the suffix “-ee”
• Euhemerism and the Gods
• Is “Prepone” a Word?
• Don’t Be Burnt By “Inflammable”
• 20 Criminal Terms You Should Know
• Having a Yen
• Not All Memes are Bad
• The Triple Threat of ‘Sures’
• Mankind, Humankind, and Gender
• Don’t Snite in Public
• 30 Religious Terms You Should Know
• Truth or Fact?
• Getting a Raise and Getting a Rise
• Electric Cars and Electrical Engineers
• The Naked Truth About “Gym” and “Gymno”
• Time on Your Hands
• “Certified” and “Certificated”
• To Put It Bluntly . . .
• Step into the GLM Time Machine
• Difference Between “Barbarous” and “Barbaric”?
• What’s That Thingummy?
• Mistletoe
• Elision or tmesis?
• A Cigarette Butt is One Thing…
• Difference Between “inure” and “enure”
• Therefore and Therefor
• Taser or Tazer? Tazing or Tasering?
• What the Heck are “Peeps”?
• Sobeit and So Be It
• So Sorry to Hear That You Were Impacted!
• Regarding Re:
• Three Alternatives?
• Leech and Leach
• What’s the Difference Between “Too” and “Also”?
• The Many Uses of “Swipe”
• Wardens and Guardians
• Words and Expressions Related to “Palm”
• Are You Sure You Mean “Majority”?
• What’s the Difference Between “Say” and “Tell”?
• What do you call your Wordhord?
• How to Describe Gibberish
• Stifle, already!
• That Annoying New Verb “disrespect”
• Fount of Wisdom
• “Only” Murder
• Uses of “Dispose”
• “Persian” is a Lovely Word
• Anorexia, Meet Orthorexia
• “Juridical” and “Juridicial”
• Sideways and Clockwise
• Hopefully Caring Less About Shibboleths
• Running Errands and Doing Chores
• Hippo Words
• Words for Saintly Golden Light
• Oligarchy + Monopoly ≠ Oligopoly
• Cinderella Didn’t Wear Cotton to the Ball
• Bouncebackability
• Italicizing Foreign Words
• Wake Up, Little Suzy!
• When is a Door Not a Door?
• You Too Can Sponsor A Word!
• What’s a Miscreant and How Is It Pronounced?
• The Difference Between “Phonics” and “Phonetics”
• Words beginning with “homo-”
• Chopping Off Syllables
• Is There a Difference Between “Assume” and “Presume”?
• Tracking the “Fangle” in “Newfangled”
• How Drunk Are You? Let Me Count the Ways!
• Running “Toward” the House, or “Towards” the House?
• Pangrams and Lipograms
• This Charette is Not A Tumbril
• 30 Words Inspired by 29 People and An Elephant
• The Changing Faces of “Present” and “Presentation”
• Flautist or Flutist?
• The Difference Between “While” and “Whilst”
• Not All Epithets are Insults
• What’s a Retronym?
• Don’t Overdo “Do”
• The Word is “Succumbed”
• What Is A Pundit or Punditry?
• What’s the Difference Between a Speech and an Address?
• Body Parts as Tools of Measurement
• Words Formed from the Initial Letters of Other Words
• Deck the Halls
• Data and Information
• Demons, Daemons and Daimons
• Names “Epicene” and Otherwise
• Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year 2008
• Words for Subservient People and Actions
• Words to Describe Fearful Recoil
• Hermes, God of the Word
• Numskulls, Noodles, and Nincompoops
• Words to Describe Degrees of Religiosity
• Don’t Blame the Americans for this One!
• Idiots, Imbeciles, and Morons
• Hurray for “Slew!”
• Here Come the Candidates
• Apophenia — Filling the Blanks
• They, their, them, eggs and freckles!
• Dial One, Followed by the Octothorpe
• The -escent Suffix
• 12 Greek Words You Should Know
• I Have A Theory…
• Complacent, Complaisant
• The Scandinavian Connection
• Obsessed With Ob- Words
• Converse Terms
• Prevaricate vs Procrastinate
• Rebut, Refute, Deny
• Dissatisfied, Unsatisfied
• Homograph Examples
• Arabic Loanwords In English
• Verb Words
• Super Words
• “Epi-” Words for Writers
• Reduplicatives And Their Meanings
• Womanly Words – Gyn
• Weird Words
• Andro- The Prefix That’s All Man
• Calling All Book Lovers
• Reduplicatives – Double Delight
• Among vs. Amongst
• Poring over “Pore” and “Pour”
• Reader Piqued By French Mutilations
• Misfeasance or Malfeasance?
• Knickerbocker Story
• Medium, Media
• Onomatopoeia (it is not something to eat)
• Good Friday and Easter
• Rhinotillexis on the Decline
• The Unfortunate Dys
• Bouillon, Bullion or Boolean?
• Fun With Words: Palindromes
• What is the Difference Between Metaphor and Simile?
• Months: A History Of Time
• Rite, Write, Right, Wright
• A Sweet Story About Marmalade
• Positions, Please
• The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should Know
• Words for Telling the Future
• Days: A History Of Time
• Time Words: Era, Epoch, and Eon
• Festive Words
• The Meaning Of Christmas
• W00T – Word Of The Year
• Gentle and Genteel
• Doublets: An Endless Source of Fascination
• Chant and Cant
• Do Synonyms Exist?
• Among/Amongst: Is there a Difference?

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