The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources 100 Exquisite Adjectives By Mark Nichol Adjectives — descriptive words that modify nouns — often come under fire for their cluttering quality, but often it’s quality, not quantity, that is the issue. Plenty of tired adjectives are available to spoil a good sentence, but when you find just the right word for the job, enrichment ensues. Practice precision when you select words. Here’s a list of adjectives: Subscribe to Receive our Articles and Exercises via Email You will improve your English in only 5 minutes per day, guaranteed! 21 Responses to “100 Exquisite Adjectives” Rebecca Fantastic list!
What's Wrong With Our Culture Thought-provoking 5 minutes on the state of the world from the late, great Alan Watts, a man far ahead of his time. Created by The Omega Point Project. “Your world is an illusion. From the day you were born, you have been conditioned. You worked hard for the future with your reward always just around the next corner or just up the next step. You accepted it as natural for one to be wealthy whilst another is poor, or the absurd notion that we must pay back the debt of our own existence. We need to move beyond revolution and into the next stage of human evolution. We will take no power back as we shall empower ourselves and we shall say: We are the humans. - Anonymous Related Posts
Color Words Colour Terms This list contains 168 definitions of obscure colour terms using combinations of 'normal' colours of the rainbow and descriptive adjectives; e.g. cardinal = deep scarlet red; russet = reddish brown. Note that most English speakers outside the U.S. spell colour with the added British 'u' rather than the American version color. Don't worry if the colours (or colors) in your universe don't match up with the definitions I've given for these words, though - I've been known to have skewed perceptions of reality ... I hope you have found this site to be useful.
100 Mostly Small But Expressive Interjections David Bier Thanks for this – what a fun post considering there’s no actual narrative in it! Cecily Some of these interjections are quite culturally and age specific, so if people need to be told what they mean, they should probably not be using them.For example, to many Brits, va-va-voom is not old-fashioned at all, but instead is firmly linked to the long-running ads that footballer Thierry Henry made for the Renault Clio. Himanshu Chanda Whoa ! What a biiiig list. And yes this ones really great. Wordy English: Vocabulary Compilation with Usage Examples A collection of five thousand English words with usage examples. For a intro, see: How to Increase Your English Vocabulary?. For daily musings, subscribe at Xah's Belles-lettres Blog. When using this site, you should have a dictionary software installed. SAT Words Words commonly found in magazines or newspapers. GRE Words Similar in nature to the SAT group but more difficult. Writer's Words When i cannot find a categorical basket to put a word in, i dump it here. Writer's words are often found in fictions, novels. I want more… Special Words: Hyphenated words, Slang, Nouns, Arcane, Poesy, … Hyphenated Words What a strung-out tongue-in-cheek booby-trap! Combination Words I daresay the forthcoming outlook of a headstrong crackpot is oftentimes a polymath not unlike the foresight of yours truly. Compound word or portmanteau words. Special Meaning Words Familiar words with unfamiliar meanings or likely to be misunderstood. English Vocabulary: Special Meaning Words Foreign Words Slang Informal Yup! Arcane
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of fiction. So I’m biased as a writer. And I’m here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. And it’s that change, and that act of reading that I’m here to talk about tonight. I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Fiction has two uses. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. It’s tosh.
List of French words and phrases used by English speakers Here are some examples of French words and phrases used by English speakers. English contains many words of French origin, such as art, competition, force, machine, police, publicity, role, routine, table, and many other anglicized French words. These are pronounced according to English rules of phonology, rather than French. This article, however, covers words and phrases that generally entered the lexicon later, as through literature, the arts, diplomacy, and other cultural exchanges not involving conquests. The phrases are given as used in English, and may seem correct modern French to English speakers, but may not be recognized as such by French speakers as many of them are now defunct or have drifted in meaning. Few of these phrases are common knowledge to all English speakers, and for some English speakers most are rarely if ever used in daily conversation, but for other English speakers many of them are a routine part of both their conversational and their written vocabulary. 1.
45 ways to avoid using the word 'very' Writers Write is your one-stop resource for writers. Use these 45 ways to avoid using the word ‘very’ to improve your writing. Good writers avoid peppering their writing with qualifiers like ‘very’ and ‘really’. They are known as padding or filler words and generally add little to your writing. According to Collins Dictionary: ‘Padding is unnecessary words or information used to make a piece of writing or a speech longer. Synonyms include: waffle, hot air, verbiage, wordiness.’ Adding modifiers, qualifiers, and unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, weakens your writing. This post gives you 45 ways to avoid using the padding word ‘very’. Three Telling Quotes About ‘Very’ “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. If you enjoyed this, you will love: Top Tip: If you want to learn how to write a book, sign up for our online course. by Amanda Patterson © Amanda Patterson
Oxford Dictionaries Online 3Q2013 update 28 August 2013, Oxford, UK Today Oxford University Press announces the latest quarterly update to OxfordDictionaries.com Online (ODO). If buzzworthy vocabulary makes you squee, set aside some me time to explore the latest words which have made their way into common usage. Picture this. You’ve just uploaded a selfie to your favourite social media website using your phablet when your FIL (that’s your father-in-law) shares a supercut of a srsly mortifying twerking session. You immediately unlike his page because there isn’t an emoji capable of expressing your desire to vom: apols, but it’s time for a digital detox. The linguistic influence of the world of gastronomy can be seen in a number of this quarter’s new entries, from cake pops and blondies to street food and guac; it might be wise to wash that down with a pear cider or a michelada before you show signs of a food baby. The Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year 2012, omnishambles, is also among the new entries. • apols, pl. n.
5 Insane Ways Words Can Control Your Mind On some level we already know that language shapes the way we think. We're automatically more afraid to fight a guy named Jack Savage than somebody named Peewee Nipplepuss, even if we've never seen either of them before. It's totally illogical, but you probably run into an example of that every day, and don't notice it. While we tend to think words are just sounds we make to express ideas, science is finding that language is more like a fun house mirror, warping what we see in mind-blowing ways. For instance ... Speaking English Makes Us More Likely to Blame People Let's say your roommate Steve is jumping on your bed. How will you answer? Keep in mind, Steve pulls this shit all the time. The answer largely depends on what language you speak. Stanford scientists did experiments on this, by having speakers of various languages watch videos featuring, in various situations, people breaking eggs or popping balloons, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. Will nothing stop his madness?
Feelings and Emotions Vocabulary Word List Advertisement. EnchantedLearning.com is a user-supported site. As a bonus, site members have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site, with print-friendly pages.Click here to learn more. (Already a member? More Word Lists Short Story Ideas and Creative Writing Prompts Here are lots of short story ideas that you can use as writing prompts. Use these story starters on their own or to get ideas for the CWN online writing courses. You'll also find links to more creative writing prompts at the bottom of the page. Any of these ideas can be used either humorously or dramatically... or you can try both. Do you like this page? Story ideas - three elements Choose a set of three elements and write a story that contains all three of them! Extreme challenge: combine three of the elements with one of the other short story ideas on this page. A stolen ring, fear of spiders, and a sinister stranger. More short story ideas Challenge: 4 stories in 4 weeks using these short story ideas. Extreme challenge: Why not write a book of short stories? A babysitter is snooping around her employer's house and finds a disturbing photograph... Even more short story ideas Your character starts receiving flowers and anonymous gifts. And still more short story ideas