Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year is "authentic." The team who made the choice say that this year it saw a substantial increase in lookups, thanks to conversations around AI and celebrity culture. There were several other words that generated buzz in 2023. Which of the following didn't make the list?
If you're trying to avoid awkward moments around the Thanksgiving table, Merriam-Webster has some controversy-free conversation starters, like the origins of terms such as gravy train and easy as pie. Just for fun, see if you and your loved ones can figure out the meaning of the word "deipnosophist"
@RickiTarr The word "Quay" pops up a dozen times in each of the hundreds of Enid Blyton adventure books I read as a young kid. (Famous Five, Secret Seven, etc). With a qua- like "quasar" & "quack", I pronounced quay as "Kway" for years. It's just not commonly used irl unless you live in a harbour, I guess? 🤷
The mundane wandering for hours ends up in one tiny magical moment. It is in that moment we breathe fully and deeply. We appreciate what we had all along and needed no wandering at all.
"The Real Self is dangerous: dangerous to the established church, dangerous to the state, dangerous to the crowd, dangerous to tradition, because once a man knows his real self, he becomes an individual."
Y'all as a second-person plural pronoun is not just “the quintessential Southern pronoun.” A linguist has found uses going back to 1631 in England, hundreds of years before the more recent usages cited by the Oxford English Dictionary.
And its inclusiveness is also gaining new respect, you hear?
It’s #BookLoversDay! If you love books, you might want to know more about where the book format came from – and we tell that story in our video about Evolution.
"Segue," a verb or noun, is a transition. It's a musical term from the Italian word for "follows," but it can be broadly applied to any change. The nonmusical sense seems to be a 20th century invention.
"Segway" was a personal transporter; the brand continues in a line of scooters.
Someone really cares about #orthography (or maybe they learned it in class?) that they tried to fix the #spelling of our university staff... (Edited: the #Canadian Oxford Dictionary lists "enrolment" as the word, which is the British spelling, but includes the American "enrollment" as a variation. Canadian websites use "enrolment.")
Learning #languages: I often have favourite #words because they hit something in my brain better than in my mother tongue.
I do love the expression of the #rabbitHole. I imagine walking down to a hole in a meadow of wild flowers. Inside it's cosy and warm, and looks very much like in a Beatrix Potter book. The rabbit family visits all the other animals and flowers with me and I discover something new around every corner. Rabbit holes are entries to wonder worlds. 😊 #languageLearning#English
The other day, I learned that the British pronounce "plait" as "plat." I thought I knew all the differences between British and American pronunciation, but that one had escaped me. I kind of like "plat," to be honest. And to-MAH-to. My wife and I should have been British. #Words#English
What are the most syllable-dense English language words you can think of?
Ignoring single letters ("a"), the word with the highest syllable-count/letter-count score I can think of (without searching online!) is "folio". And "Io", of course; but that feels like cheating :-)
Edit: Let's rule out proper nouns, so no "Io", or "Oreo", etc #words#language