A fun item today comes from Ideas Illustrated, who have colour coded words according to their origin.
This allows readers to quickly see the word origins of a block of text – from Old English to Classical Latin. It turns out that the texts ‘translated’ mostly contained words with their origins in Old English (represented by a pink colour). Even a modern text about baseball came out mostly pink.
I wonder what the result would be if this blog was colour coded?
Whether you’re headed off to a new school or starting a new job, there’s always new lingo to learn.
This may be especially true of environments where there are lots of young people, who tend to have slang that’s all their own. Don’t worry though, Huffington Post has the “Ultimate College Dictionary”, just for you!
Here’s a couple of examples to get you started:
Darty (or Day-long): A party occurring during the day (aka an excuse to rage in broad daylight). At many college campuses, darty or day-long season begins in early spring, when the weather starts to warm up, and typically ends right before finals start.
Kegs & Eggs: A morning keg party. These parties usually begin before daybreak (around 6 a.m.) and last until noon or later. Another version is finishing off the keg used at a party the night before while eating eggs.
If you’re a word geek, you probably already know all about the World Palindrome Championships, whose inaugural event was held a couple of weeks ago in Brooklyn.
Held as part of the larger American Crossword Tournament, the Championships featured six expert palindromists facing off against each other to see who would be crowned the best. It turned out to be Mark Saltveit, a freelance writer who had spent weeks preparing for the challenge. His winning palindrome?
“Devil Kay fixes trapeze part; sex if yak lived.”
Saltveit’s prize was $500, and after the competition he joked ”I’ll probably quit my day job and go full-time on the professional palindrome money-winning circuit.”
(Source: Oregon Live)
Thought all dictionaries were hand crafted by old men in dusty basements working late into the night? Not this one.
Wordnik, an online dictionary, uses automatic programmes to trawl the web and come up with definitions. It looks at
“…the texts of news feeds, archived broadcasts, the blogosphere, Twitter posts and dozens of other sources for the raw material of Wordnik citations, says Erin McKean, a founder of the company.
Then, when you search for a word, Wordnik shows the information it has found, with no editorial tinkering. Instead, readers get the full linguistic Monty.
“We don’t pre-select and pre-prune,” she said. “We show you what’s out there now. Then we let people decide whether to use a word or not.” (Source: New York Times)
So instead of the word having a static definition which may have been written many years ago, users of Wordnik can see the word’s current meaning or meanings from looking at the example sentences provided.
Take a look at the full article for more information.
In strange new research news, apparently the layout of your keyboard may have an affect on how we perceive meaning in the words we type.
According to researchers from University College London, we may be “connecting the meanings of the words with the physical way they’re typed on the keyboard”, in what they’ve termed the QWERTY effect. Letter combinations of the right side of the keyboard are easier to type; this leads to positive meaning. For the left side of the keyboard, the reverse is true.
Jasmin cautioned that words’ literal meanings almost certainly outweigh their QWERTY-inflected associations, and said the study only shows a correlation rather than clear cause-and-effect. Also, while a typist’s left- or right-handedness didn’t seem to matter, Jasmin said there’s not yet enough data to be certain.
“But as far as I know, this is the first demonstration that even hints how a word is typed can shape what it means over time,” he said.
In the future, the researchers plan to scrutinize other kinds of keyboards.
“In different languages, there are other variations with more and different punctuation keys in different places and more letters on the right than the left,” he said. “Technology changes words, and by association languages. It’s an important thing to look at.” (Source: Wired)
The full article can be read at the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Image: Just2shutter / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Little bit behind this on this, since the Super Bowl happened last weekend, but at least we’ll all be prepared with some trivia for next year!
Over at the Boston Globe, Erin McKean has investigated why the Super Bowl is called the “Super” rather than the “Totally Awesome Game that Lots of People Watch” (I know, that’s not very catchy). Apparently it was originally called something different:
The Super Bowl originally had a more prosaic name: The first two games were officially called the “AFL-NFL Championship Game,” with “Super Bowl” becoming official with the third game in 1968. (The Roman numerals didn’t show up until the fifth Super Bowl game, in 1970.) The name “Super Bowl” is credited to Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and the founder of the American Football League, who said he took the name from his daughter’s Wham-O Super Ball toy. (The word bowl used for football games most likely comes from the bowl-shaped Yale Bowl stadium.) (Source: Boston Globe)
So now you know: the Super Bowl was named after a toy!
Having problems with the vocabulary in your class? Why not write your own dictionary!
That’s exactly what one University of Wisconsin student has done. Josh Abramson from UW-Eau Claire created his own dictionary called “Definitions Made Simple” because he was struggling with vocab definitions for the GRE.
“Half the GRE is vocab-based knowledge,” said Abramson, who will graduate in May with his second bachelor’s degree from the university. “If I had to look up a few words, it would take me 20 to 25 minutes because the way the definitions were worded were so confusing.” (Source: Superior Telegram)
The final book includes 1200 definitions and can be used by those who want to improve their vocab as well as though studying for tests. Abramson has provided clear definitions and example sentences which he hopes will make words easier to remember.
Language learners can also benefit from creating their own vocab books. You may not need definitions, but having a handy reference with the word in your target language next to the word in English could be enough to jog your memory and help improve your language skills.
Scrabble is a great game for improving your vocabulary, both in your native and target languages. There’s nothing like a bit of competition to act as an incentive to learn.
According to a Lifehacker article, they key to winning at Scrabble is knowing all the two letter words. Doesn’t sounds too hard, right? Well, there’s 124 of them.
aa ab ad ae ag ah ai al am an ar as at aw ax ay ba be bi bo by ch da de di do ea ed ee ef eh el em en er es et ex fa fe fy gi go gu ha he hi hm ho id if in io is it ja jo ka ki ko ky la li lo ma me mi mm mo mu my na ne no nu ny ob od oe of oh oi om on oo op or os ou ow ox oy pa pe pi po qi re sh si so st ta te ti to ug uh um un up ur us ut we wo xi xu ya ye yo yu za zo
(Source: SOWPODS via Lifehacker)
Oh yes.
But help is at hand. Tom Rees has written scripts to create mnemonics so that all the letter combinations can be remembered. So for ‘a’ he came up with ‘birthdays mangle wax’. The letter ‘a’ can go with each letter in the mnemonic to create a new word. Simple!
So if you’ve got some IT skills and some time on your hands, give it a go in your target language – you’ll be the Scrabble King or Queen before you know it!
I’m currently in South Carolina, where there is a lot of coverage of the Republican presidential nominee process. This reminded me there’s an election this year, and got me wondering what new words the election may bring.
The US News & World Report has some political words/phrases as some of their 10 new words learned in 2011.
Supercommittee (noun)
Origin: U.S. debt ceiling crisis
1. Colloquial term for Congress’ Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, formed to forge bipartisan agreement around the debt-ceiling crisis. 2. Sometimes used ironically; given the committee’s ultimate failure, “super” suddenly seemed like an unfortunate misnomer.
Endgame (noun)
First known usage: 1881; recent notable usage: countless news articles about the Europe sovereign debt crisis.
1. The final actions in a larger process. 2. The eagerly-awaited roadmap for how the European sovereign debt crisis will play out, thus allowing the rest of the world to breathe easily again.
“Oops.” (interjection)
First known usage: 1933; recent notable usage: Rick Perry
1. Expression typically expressing dismay or an apology, often at a mistake. 2. The sound of one of the biggest presidential debate gaffes ever.
I wonder if these will continue to be used this year? Whether they are or not, I’m sure the election will throw up some interesting new phrases.
2011 has been a very eventful year, and it’s reflected in Time magazine’s Top 10 buzzwords of the year.
Their number one word is “occupy”, with this summation:
In 2011, occupy became this generation’s sit-in, a word connoting peaceful but uncompromising objections to the status quo.
The other words that made it into their top five are:
2. Winner/winning (in honour of Charlie Sheen)
3. Planking (see photo)
4. Carmageddon (what was supposed to happen when part of one of LA’s highways closed)
5. Super PAC (“super PACs are committees that can spend unlimited amounts of money in elections to support or oppose candidates — as long as they do it independently”)
See the rest of the list over at Time magazine.
