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In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various methodologies, slides displayed behind them showed words that are more often associated with Twitter than Oxford: “Bussin,” virtual attendees were told, means impressive or tasty, while a “boo” is a lover. Those were two of the first 100 words that the Oxford University Press said it had prepared to include in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the hopeful result of the three-year research project announced last spring.

An academic at a teacher training college has claimed efforts to improve vocabulary in schools are ‘racist, classist and ableist’.Ian Cushing, lecturer in English and Education at Edge Hill University, believes tackling the ‘word gap’ – the difference between the language range of typical middle class and working class or disabled youngsters – has ‘colonial’ roots.

Email on communications policy reminds worker of responsibility to ‘be impartial’ The United Nations has emailed staff advising them not to refer to the situation in Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion”, in a move to balance political sensitivities as powerful member state Russia cracks down domestically on those who use the words. Instead, UN staff have been instructed to use the terms “conflict” or “military offensive” to describe Russia’s invasion of its neighbour, which has killed hundreds of civilians and forced two million people to flee the country. In an email to staff on Monday, the UN communications department...

WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday scolded a journalist who asked her about Americans “stranded” in Afghanistan — insisting it is “irresponsible” to use that term despite numerous reports of Americans being unable to board flights out. Biden administration officials say they don’t know how many US citizens remain in the country following last week’s Taliban takeover, but some are alerting news outlets that they cannot reach Kabul’s airport to be evacuated

Zaila Avant-garde is the new national spelling bee champion, but it's not the first time she's been on top of the world at something. The 14-year-old from New Orleans was named the winner of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, spelling words such as "querimonious," "ancistroid," "solidungulate." It was "Murraya," a genus of flowering citrus plants in Asia, that won Avant-garde the competition after runner-up Chaitra Thummala misspelled "neroli oil" in the 17th round. 13-year-old Zaila Avant-garde of Louisiana is your 93rd Scripps National #SpellingBee champion ‼️ The first African-American winner of the competition 👏 pic.twitter.com/y2Y5dAGcVN — ESPN...

I have no other words for this... https://twitter.com/rubinreport/status/1340099167964688386?s=21

 by Chuck NessEver here the joke about the husband who was looking through the paper when he came upon a study that said women use more words than men? There was a married man who read in a magazine that, "Men use about 7000 words per day, but women use 20,000". Excited to prove to his wife that he had been right all along when he accused her of talking too much, he showed her the study results. The wife thought for a while, then finally she said to her husband, "It’s because men never listen so we have...

It's totally fine to use 'decimate' as a synonym for 'devastate'. This is why. The issue that many people have with the decline and fall of the word decimate is that is once upon a time it had a very singular meaning, a meaning that is in danger of being lost forever to the vandals and barbarian hordes who are manhandling the English language through using this word to mean “to destroy a large number of.” The specific complaint is that decimate had the specific meaning, in ancient Rome, of killing one of every ten soldiers, as a form of...

President Donald Trump said Monday that his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman made up the story about a possible tape existing of him using the n-word during his show The Apprentice. Newman claimed in her new book that a tape of the president existed that featured him saying the n-word. But Trump said the former producer of the show called him to say there was no tape of him using the word. “Mark Burnett called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deran

Mergatroyd! Do you remember that word? Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Mergatroyd? ‘Heavens to Mergatroyd’! The other day a not so elderly (I say 75) lady said something to her grandson about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said "What the heck is a Jalopy?" OMG! He never heard of the word jalopy! She knew she was old . . . but not that old. Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle. About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have...

To say that some people dislike Donald Trump may well be the understatement of the year. It's hard to imagine any duly elected president seeing so many protests in his first two months in office, yet here we are. It's so bad that now an 11-year-old in Annadale, New York, was docked 15 points on a homework assignment because she failed to answer a question demanding students bash Trump: Vincent Ungro, a dad from Annadale, New York, has an 11-year-old daughter who attends I.S. (Intermediate School) 75. She asked him for help with her vocabulary homework last Friday night because...

Ever wonder about your vocabulary size? Even if you are a daily English speaker or a native English speaker, you still might find this test challenging! We conducted academic research and looked at online resources to design the model of this quiz. We believe we've prepared the best quiz for you!

Donald Trump's use of vocabulary and grammar is more elementary than that of other candidates, according to a new study that compared the candidates' English language skills. The New York businessman's grammar was comparable to a 5th grader's, lower than the average 6th to 8th grade levels used by Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, according to a newly released Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute study. Sanders scored highest in vocabulary, and was ranked at the level of an 11th grader. Trump was most comparable to a 7th...

Sixth graders in a quiet Florida town saw a lot more vocabulary-lesson excitement than usual recently after a fill-in-the-blank question about porn magazines and the ethical considerations of sperm donation cropped up on an assignment. The kerfuffle occurred at Corkscrew Middle School, Fort Myers NBC affiliate WBBH reports. Here’s the question in full:

Although English spelling is famously weird, there are at least some words that anyone learning English will easily get right — words like black, board, boat, clap, coat, cup, and hand. But put cup and board together and you get cupboard, which rhymes with Hubbard. Add kerchief to hand and you say it "hankerchif." Clearly English spelling is an evil trap devised to make the unaware look bad. "You said 'hand ker chief'? Oh. Ha ha. How terrible for you." So we learn these exceptions, and we use them often enough that we remember them. But there are some words...

Normally, oligarchical collectivists eliminate words by declaring them politically incorrect, thereby restricting our thoughts by restricting our vocabulary. But the Obama Regime has given us a new word:

My twelve-year-old recently finished George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I asked her whether she had taken any lessons from the book, she airily replied, “The individual is powerless, so there’s really no point in trying.” Alarmed, I tried to explain that the world was an altogether cheerier place than Orwell, writing in 1948, could have imagined. Unrepentant socialist as he was, he never overcame his belief that the free market was doomed. He would have been stunned by the way that seventy years of exchange and specialization have served not only to make us wealthier, but to make us more...

One way of reinventing reality is to warp the meaning of words. No president in memory has waged such a war on the English language as has Barack Obama — changing the meaning of vocabulary to hide what he fears might otherwise be unpopular.

The English language is always adding new words. Why, just a few years ago, there was no way to tell a social-networking fangirl that it was a spoiler alert to talk about who was catfished on MTV last night, nor was there a way to properly discuss a social networking hashtag of a steampunk tweep taking a selfie while listening to auto-tune dubstep. Merriam-Webster has fixed this by adding 150 new words to its official dictionary in 2014. Here are just some of the new additions:

Global observers have been sounding the klaxons for some time now when it comes to the American education system. We’re falling behind all of the smart countries, slowly sinking into a comfortable swamp populated by obese couch potatoes who gaze into their smart phone screens with glazed over eyes. The kids simply aren’t doing well enough on the SATs and the future looks dismal indeed.But this is ‘MERICA, people! We’re not going to take this lying down! If our kids aren’t doing well enough on the standardized tests, there’s a clear solution. We’ll make the tests easier. The organization that...