A Word a Day...Here to Rock Your World
If you’re a word nut like me, you need to know about A Word A Day. Sign up for its newsletter, and every morning a new word arrives in your email inbox. (yay! hands clapping)
The subscription is free, and it runs forever until you tell it to stop. AWAD is a veritable fountain of verbal fun—plus, you learn stuff you never suspected. Take yesterday’s word:
skeuomorph
PRONUNCIATION
MEANING: noun: A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip. (boldface mine).
That familiar, comforting click…is a sound clip?
My world is rocked. But...now I know the word for those useless metal rivets on my jeans. Hmmm. We'll call it a draw. (Apple fritters are still real, right? I can deal with fake clicky noises...just tell me the apple fritters are still genuine.)
The subscription is free, and it runs forever until you tell it to stop. AWAD is a veritable fountain of verbal fun—plus, you learn stuff you never suspected. Take yesterday’s word:
skeuomorph
PRONUNCIATION
MEANING: noun: A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip. (boldface mine).
That familiar, comforting click…is a sound clip?
My world is rocked. But...now I know the word for those useless metal rivets on my jeans. Hmmm. We'll call it a draw. (Apple fritters are still real, right? I can deal with fake clicky noises...just tell me the apple fritters are still genuine.)
Labels: geek alert
posted by Christine Fletcher at 7:55 AM
7 Comments:
Now if I would have saw that word somewhere, I would have sworn it was misspelled!
I need to get on that word-a-day list, too.
Mmmm...apple fritters...
I did a search on iGoogle and it looks like you can select A Word a Day as one of your widgets. You can also select a Spanish Word a Day and a French Word a Day. Or you could waste your entire day exploring all the other available widgets. iGoogle's pretty amazing. And Google Reader make my life so much easier.
Lisa
geek alert...
Your label is so totally appropriate, and you're in good company (or, at least, large company - googling "geek alert" (in quotes) returns 46,000 hits).
I'm still awed by such words as ellipsis which I know you Association of English Majors types actually use in everyday conversation.
Oooh I love this! I'm a word nerd, too.
English is sometimes like a whole new language :) Great post, and as far as I know, apple fritters are still the real deal!
Very cool. I love weird words, but I'm afraid this would tempt me to use them in my writing. I recently had to talk myself out of using "sphymic" in a sentence!
Here's a fun one: "smaragdine" -- found it randomly enough at Starbucks some time ago when they had a spelling bee promotion going on. Means having to do with emeralds!
P.S. I just saw that you're speaking at the Joint Conference tomorrow, too. Hope to see you there! (My session is right after yours.)
Cheers!
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