Australian Geographic

1 мин. чтения

Awake: If you are aware of what’s really going on, as opposed to what appears to be going on, you may still say, “I’m awake to what you’re up to.” Th is usage seems to have grown out of Vaux’s original definition: “To be awake to any scheme, deceptio

The Big Issue

3 мин. чтения

The ‘lockdown project’ rapidly became a cliché: The bread-baking, bassoon-playing, Japanese-learning homeworker battling through the ennui of isolation. And yet that drive to find something new to occupy oneself with during a time of intense anxiety

The Guardian

3 мин. чтения

We shouldn’t worry when a word falls into obscurity. There’s usually a good reason, and a new one will always fill its place

The Atlantic

4 мин. чтения

When people share a space, their collective experience can sprout its own vocabulary, known as a familect.

NPR

1 мин. чтения

Assimilation has a cost. As a third generation Chinese American, NPR Short Wave's Emily Kwong is rediscovering the language her father once knew, and what that means for where she comes from.

The Christian Science Monitor

3 мин. чтения

It’s impressive how educational hand-drying the dishes can be. Almost without knowing it, one may absorb a range of more or less useful information as the cutlery gets drier and the dishcloth damper. I am thinking in particular of two literary dish t

The Christian Science Monitor

2 мин. чтения

Many Scandinavians frown on tipping, and they’re not too keen on please or thanks (as English-speakers think of them) either.

NPR

1 мин. чтения

On-air Challenge: I'm going to read you some sentences. Each sentence contains two words that have homophones that are opposites. Ex. Does Liv Ullmann dye her hair? --> LIVE & DIE (homophones of "Liv" and "dye") 1. In London, bar patrons who misuse

Nautilus

2 мин. чтения

Many of us have been taught that pronouncing vowels indistinctly and dropping consonants are symptoms of slovenly speech, if not outright disregard for the English language. The Irish playwright St. John Ervine viewed such habits as evidence that som

The Atlantic

1 мин. чтения

As soon as Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy, people noted a few of his linguistic quirks, such as the extended, supervowel pronunciation of huge and the references to himself in the third person. But beyond those, the version of Engl

Surfer

3 мин. чтения

By JUSTIN HOUSMAN Do you have other interests besides surfing? Other life-consuming hobbies or sports, complete with their own unique cultures, charmingly peculiar vocabularies, verbal signifiers of who’s part of the in crowd and who’s not? Can you m

Writing Magazine

6 мин. чтения

I’ve been writing novels for more than ten years but only recently decided to become a member of the Society of Authors and wish I had spent a few of the pounds it has cost blundering about getting books published on POD for my friends (and hopefully

The Christian Science Monitor

2 мин. чтения

English has so many creative ways to proclaim that something is ‘nonsense.’ Part 2 of a series on the nuts and bolts of humorous words.

Country Life

1 мин. чтения

ACCORDING to the Oxford English Dictionary, about 1,000 of the 171,146 words we use (47,156 are obsolete—a shame in these days of recycling) in the English language comprise three letters. Despite their paucity, three-letter words cover a lot of grou

Cycling Weekly

1 мин. чтения

One of the pleasures of cycling is the great many athletes whose names are in languages other than your own. There are three basic approaches – and for the sake of argument I’m going to assume your native language is English. The first option is just

Games World of Puzzles

2 мин. чтения

FROM JUNE In this contest, we made three lists, each containing 12 things that belonged to a specific category, with every item on each list being a single word. Next, we altered each list by removing some consecutive letters from each item on the li

Literary Hub

5 мин. чтения

As soon as I saw the cover art, I knew I was in luck: my publisher had come up with a gorgeous, smart design for the book jacket of the novel I’d spent years writing. There was just one problem with it… a problem that seemed to worry no one but me.

Business Today

1 мин. чтения

“DIFFERENT LAN-GUAGES HAVE their nuances. Merely translating does not capture its deep semantics; under-standing a language natively is important,” says Gargi B. Dasgupta, Director, IBM Research India, and CTO of IBM India and South Asia. Under her l

Sparkle Buds Magazine

1 мин. чтения

What does it mean? to cause to feel shock, horror, or disgust For example... Dan was appalled by Mark’s foul language.

BBC History Magazine

1 мин. чтения

”Glee” is the Middle English word for the Latinate ”pleasure” and ”music”. Thus, ”mind-glee” means pleasure/music of the mind. “Sill”, as in window sill, means threshold. So Barnes’ “skysill” translates to threshold of the sky. Barnes explains this t

PaperCraft Inspirations

1 мин. чтения

We love a fun new card technique and these clever cascading alphabet dies are most certainly fun – and so versatile, too! If you want to add a bit of oomph to the greetings on your cards, these die sets are perfect! Whatever you want to say on your d

Futurity

2 мин. чтения

Using the generic “you” can help make ideas resonate, research on what readers highlight indicates. Writers often use the word “you” generically to make an idea seem more universal, even though it might not be. A paper on the linguistic device appear

The Christian Science Monitor

2 мин. чтения

Social media commentary was focused on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's use of complexifier, which came up when he explained, “My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me.” The question echoed through cyberspace: “Is complexifier even a w

Literary Hub

5 мин. чтения

Me and my sister had our own language as children. I was an inventor of language—of elaborate code in my childhood diaries, rune-like and incomprehensible, and of big words, as many as you could fit into a sentence. But this language, it was between

Surfer

3 мин. чтения

Do you have other interests besides surfing? Other life-consuming hobbies or sports, complete with their own unique cultures, charmingly peculiar vocabularies, verbal signifiers of who’s part of the in crowd and who’s not? Can you move freely between

Games World of Puzzles

1 мин. чтения

In this puzzle, all of the answers are the first (or last) halves of a word or phrase made up of two identical syllables or words. For example, “Sweet treat” would be BONBON, so you would enter BON in the grid. Proper nouns are allowed. Once you dete

Woman NZ

1 мин. чтения

Each number represents a different letter of the alphabet. Work out which number stands for which letter to complete the crossword. We’ve given you two letters to start. All words are from a dictionary and no proper nouns are used. All letters of the

New Internationalist

7 мин. чтения

‘Nana-Ama!’ my mother called out. ‘Come meet one of your cousins.’ We were in Accra, at a family gathering – a wedding or funeral or naming ceremony, I can’t say which; they all blur into what, essentially, seems like the same memory of delicious pla

The Atlantic

2 мин. чтения

Sign up for Caleb’s newsletter here. The first time I heard the phrase It’s giving, I admit that I was mystified. A friend showed me a pre–Met Gala Instagram post by the pop star Camila Cabello: a picture of her face with small circles of makeup next

India Today

1 мин. чтения

Saura, Munda, Kui, Juanga-all tribal languages from Odisha-are just some of 124 languages that can be found on StoryWeaver, a treasure trove of engaging illustrated books for children. The storybooks are categorised according to reading levels, with