We began the month with the part two of our post words that have evolved in meaning thanks to the internet and technology. Can you think of any more? For our Commonly Confused Words blog post, we looked at the difference between loan and lone. Do you know when to use which word? Click here for tips and tricks to help you tell them apart. There are an estimated 25,000 idioms in the English language and many of them are ways of talking about human emotion. In the past we’ve shared alternate words for happy, and this month we looked at idioms and expressions about joy. Our Word for Wednesday theme for May was musical instruments. Who was the saxophone named...
Recently we shared ten words that have evolved in meaning as technology has advanced, here are ten more: refresh Refresh is the verb used to describe the act of reloading the data on a webpage (usually to see if any new information has been added). We refreshed the page to check the score. spam Spam refers to unwanted email or messages. Have you checked your spam folder? stream A stream is a continuous flow of video or audio information that is transmitted over the internet. The word is also used as a verb to describe the act of watching or listening to something in this way. We streamed the show on Netflix. ...
Since many of our users have been using our e-learning resources more than usual over the last several weeks, we have been doing our best to help our community stay connected. We began this month by sharing three ways we have improved our site to help our users. We returned to our 10 Words series this month and put communication at the heart of our list. Here are 10 ways to talk about talking. In this post we looked at words that have evolved thanks to technology and the internet. Stay tuned for part 2. This month we tried something new with our Word for Wednesday posts and grouped them around the same theme. The theme we chose was animal...
Due to lockdown, more and more people are turning to the internet to find virtual alternatives for their usual entertainment. This week we are looking at twenty words that have evolved in meaning as technology has advanced. block This word for obstruct or prevent is used on the internet to describe the act of preventing someone from contacting you or seeing your information. She blocked anyone she didn’t know who tried to message her. bookmark This word for a paper or ribbon marker used to keep one’s place in a book now also describes the act of marking a webpage you want to refer to again. Make sure you bookmark Spe...
All over the internet, people are celebrating World Emoji Day – so what better choice could there be for our Word for Wednesday? World Emoji Day was launched by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge in 2014, though people sometimes posted the calendar emoji on July 17 before then. This is because July 17 is the date shown on most calendar emojis – though Facebook shows May 14, founder Mark Zuckerberg’s birthday instead. Emojipedia is searched over 25 million times a month and the team there work on updating emoji definitions, tracking the changes to emoji definitions, and keeping up with the latest emoji definitions. Click here to find out some interesting stastics. ...
It would be interesting to ask different people what their first association with the word stream is. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is Netflix. Others, I’m sure, will think of small narrow rivers, or associate the word with the flow of people or air or smoke. Literary friends might think of stream of consciousness. In Old English, stream referred to a ‘course of water’ and in the twelfth century, the word started being used to describe ‘anything issuing from a source and flowing continuously’. Stream isn’t the only water-related word that has been borrowed in reference to technology – in the early days of the internet, ...
What is a portmanteau word? A portmanteau word is made up of two or more existing words that have been blended together. Often portmanteau words start off as slang or nonsense words but later become part of Standard English due to being widely used. The rise of technology and the internet, in particular, has led to many portmanteau words being created, e.g. pixel, emoticon, and vlog. Why ‘portmanteau’? It was the famous British children’s writer, Lewis Carroll, who first used ‘portmanteau’ to describe these word blends in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. A portmanteau was a type of suitcase which had two compa...
This week we’ll be looking at another word that has evolved multiple meanings: cookie. The Internet age has transformed the meanings and connotations of hundreds of words and even introduced new ones into our dictionary; ‘Google’ and ‘retweet’ to name a couple. The word 'cookie' comes from the Dutch 'koekje' or ‘little cake’ and made its way into American culture as a small sweet cake. What would be deemed a biscuit in England would be called a 'cookie' in the States, where a biscuit is a kind of hard-crusted bread cake – much like British scones. Despite the differences in the definition of biscuit, both cul...
This week in Britain, all eyes are on Chancellor George Osborne’s fourth budget statement as Britain’s growth forecast is halved. On a brighter note our word for Wednesday is ‘budget’. Isn’t a bit of etymology slightly more uplifting than the growth forecast? As a noun, the word budget means an estimated financial expenditure over a determined period of time. ‘We have a budget of £10,000 to start this company’ As a verb, one can ‘budget’ their funds for an event they know will be costly. ‘We need to budget our holiday costs carefully’ As an adjective, budget describes an inexpensive or lower quality item. ‘It’s only a budget laptop as I only need the Internet.’ The w...
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