Our 3 Word Lists for June 2023 were words ending in '-stle’, 10 Words for... SAD, and – to celebrate the summer solstice here in the Western hemisphere – Characters in A Midsummer Night´s Dream. Studying Shakespeare at school? We’ve got lots more word lists for you. This month, we’ve also been busy adding word lists to our Characters from English Literature collection. Can’t find a list for a text you’re studying? Let us know! At Spellzone, we are committed to creating an inclusive and accessible learning environment to ensure as many users as possible can engage with our resources. &...
There are over a million word lists on Spellzone. Each one can be used in a variety of online and offline activities. Words ending in 're' In British English, the weak vowel ending is sometimes spelt with the letters 're'. Learn more about the differences between British English and American English in Unit 36. Easter Vocabulary Easter falls on April 17 this year. If you need a break from all the chocolate, why not spend some time testing yourself on these Easter vocabulary words? You can even practise them in our Easter Egg Hunt spelling game. Characters from Much Ado About Nothing April 23 marks ...
April 23 marked Shakespeare Day in the UK and to celebrate we’ve picked characters from Shakespeare’s plays for this month's Word for Wednesday theme. William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. Scholars believe his birthday and death day were both April 23. His work—which is still wildly popular today—includes 38 plays and over a hundred poems. Learn more about how Shakespeare influenced the English language here. So far we’ve looked at Romeo from Romeo and Juliet, Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Falstaff who appears in four of Shakespeare’s plays. Our final Shakespearea...
April 23 marks Shakespeare Day in the UK and to celebrate we’ve picked characters from Shakespeare’s plays for this month's Word for Wednesday theme. William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. Scholars believe his birthday and death day were both April 23. His work—which is still wildly popular today—includes 38 plays and over a hundred poems. Learn more about how Shakespeare influenced the English language here. So far we’ve looked at at Romeo from Romeo and Juliet and Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Today’s Shakespearean character is Sir John ...
April 23 marks Shakespeare Day in the UK and to celebrate we’ve picked characters from Shakespeare’s plays for this month's Word for Wednesday theme. William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. Scholars believe his birthday and death day were both April 23. His work—which is still wildly popular today—includes 38 plays and over a hundred poems. Learn more about how Shakespeare influenced the English language here. Last week, we looked at at Romeo from Romeo and Juliet.Today’s character is Puck—a fairy who appears in Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Th...
April 23 marks Shakespeare Day in the UK and to celebrate we’ve picked characters from Shakespeare’s plays for this month's Word for Wednesday theme. William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. Scholars believe his birthday and death day were both April 23. His work—which is still wildly popular today—includes 38 plays and over a hundred poems. Learn more about how Shakespeare influenced the English language here. The first character we’ve chosen to look at this month is Romeo Montague. Romeo is a title characters from one of Shakespeare’s early plays Romeo and Juliet which premiered in 1597. The play tells the ...
Did you know there are over a million word lists on Spellzone? Every word list can be used in a variety of online and offline activities – learn more about them here. Here are 3 word lists to try in April: Easter Vocabulary April this year means Easter holidays! If you need a break from all the chocolate, why not spend some time testing yourself on these Easter vocabulary words? You can even practise them in our Easter Egg Hunt spelling game. Learn some eggy idioms for Easter here and about the words ‘chicken’ and ‘egg’ here. Words with Doubled Letters Our second word list this month is based around a spe...
Tomorrow – February 13 – marks World Radio Day and this year’s theme is diversity. Here is what UNESCO writes about this day on their website: “Radio is a powerful medium for celebrating humanity in all its diversity and constitutes a platform for democratic discourse. At the global level, radio remains the most widely consumed medium. This unique ability to reach out the widest audience means radio can shape a society’s experience of diversity, stand as an arena for all voices to speak out, be represented and heard. Radio stations should serve diverse communities, offering a wide variety of programs, viewpoints and content, and reflect the div...
Do you know the term ‘star-crossed’? You may have come across it in the opening of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Chorus: Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents' strife. Romeo And Juliet Prologue, 1–8 If you are 'star-crossed' it means you are doomed. In Romeo and Juliet, you find out how the story ends right in the...
With the birth of Prince Louis last month, and Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle just a few days away, we decided it was the perfect time to look at idioms about royalty. An idiom is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning separate from the actual definitions of the words used. With an estimated 25,000 idioms, it’s no wonder English is such a difficult language to learn! Here are the royalty-related idioms we managed to come up with – can you think of any others? a cat may look like a king – someone of low status still has rights a horse, a horse, a kingdom for my horse – a quotation from Shakespeare’s Richard III that is s...
Although we don’t know the exact date of William Shakespeare’s birthday, he was baptised on April 26th 1564. Scholars believe he was probably born on April 23rd, and so every year, on this date, people in the United Kingdom celebrate Shakespeare Day. At Spellzone we’re huge fans of William Shakespeare – so much so that we’ve written about him many times over the years. Indeed, the Bard is a difficult subject to avoid because so many English words, idioms, and expressions were made popular by their appearance in his work. Here are some of our favourite articles and resources on William Shakespeare and his plays: Shakespeare in Love Shakespeare is famo...
Over the years, here on the blog, we’ve looked at many of the interesting stories or rumours about where certain words and phrases in the English language originate from. One reason for this is because we believe that knowing the origin can really help trigger your memory when trying to figure out how to spell a word (particularly in the case of word roots). The other reason, of course, is that many of these stories are so interesting and unexpected. If you’re new to our site, here are five of our favourite articles on word origins to get you started. From Avada Kedavra to Abracadabra! Have you ever wondered where our words for magic spells come from? In this article we...
While you can sometimes get away without using capital letters in informal writing (like emails or text messages), it is important to learn how to use them correctly for formal writing (like essays and business correspondence). You should always use a capital letter in the following four situations: At the beginning of a sentence. Always start a sentence with a capital letter – this is probably one of the first writing rules you ever learned. For example: The fair came to town on a sunny Saturday. I wanted to ride on the carousel, but Mark wanted to play the games. When you are formally quoting someone or writing speech, you should use a capital letter aft...
The identity of the longest word in English has long been disputed and many words have even been created specifically to take the title. Normally such words are purely technical terms and don’t make it into any recognised dictionaries but there are some exceptions. The name of the largest known protein, Titin is a whopping 189.819 letters long, taking around 3.5 hours just to pronounce! It is therefore given the short hand: ‘Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine’ But is this really a word? It is disputed, since naming a chemical compound by its individual molecules could mean ending up with words much, much longer than this. The longest word fe...
Had he had access to the elixir of life, William Shakespeare would have been 450 years old today. However it was (to be or) not to be... Known as 'The Bard' his popularity today remains immense and to illustrate this he was recently voted to be the UK's greatest cultural icon in an international survey conducted by the British Council. Where does the word bard originate? Of Celtic origin, it was a derogatory term for an itinerant musician or poet (the Scottish Gaelic 'bardos', Irish 'bard' and Welsh 'bardd') who recited verses about the exploits of their clansmen. It eventually became the word to be associated with any poet who wrote verse of a he...
Recently a Spellzone user got in touch with us to ask for information on the words device and devise. Naturally we thought these words would make a great subject for our Commonly Confused Words series. In British English, when two words look similar but one is spelt with a ‘c’ and the other is spelt with an ‘s’, it is often the case that the former is a noun and the latter is a verb. For example, when spelt with a ‘c’, the word ‘practice’ refers to application of an idea or the carrying out of a profession: He tried to put his new maths skills into practice, but still needed a calculator to work out the final sum. Dr Smi...
Whether you love Valentine’s Day or think the day is a complete waste of time, there’s no denying that notions of love and heartbreak have inspired writers and artists for thousands of years. There are countless idioms associated with love: “…from the bottom of my heart”, “I have a crush on you”, “I’m head over heels in love”, and even “broken heart” – but today we’re going to look at the expression “apple of my eye”. In case you’ve forgotten, an idiom is a figure of speech which is used to describe something other than its literal meaning – so in this case, the expression isn’t...
For a moment, let’s venture into the mysterious and umbral realms of slumber. Daydreams, nightmares, fantasies, imagination… What do these words mean to you? To me they conjure a very distinct mood or state of mind: clouded, shadowy and often obscure… yet seemingly… real. The word dream encompasses a diverse set of definitions. While a dream could merely refer to a hope, desire or wish for the future – we also attribute the word to the boundless unpredictability of our mind during sleep. Over the centuries, the word dream has become more and more inclined towards the non-existent, the fantastical and spiritual. Many people attempt to interpret and...
For centuries, coins have been used for trade and coins as legal tender have been standardized by governments across the world. Modern coins and banknotes have little to no inherent value or use – we have ‘attributed’ value to these coins and notes to create a standardized money system, the problem with this is that this ‘invented’ currency can fluctuate in value and even lose its value altogether. This has not always been the case, however. Before everything became so readily available, the various items used as tender actually had inherent value and/or uses. In other words, throughout history we have used some pretty crazy things as coins. Such coins range from the logical (gold, silver...
This month we’re looking at words that originate in the literature. We started off by celebrating J.K. Rowling’s birthday and taking a look at Four Made-Up Words from Harry Potter - and, because we love magic here at Spellzone, we also used the word ‘Wizard’ for our weekly Word for Wednesday. We then went back in time took at look at the word ‘quixotic’ which comes from the title character in what is often described as the first ever modern novel: Don Quixote. This week, we’re going to look at a word that comes from a lesser known character, but which describes a rather easy-to-make mistake! Today’s word is: ‘malapropism’. Who is...
Today we’re going to zoom out from specifically looking at the United States of America to taking a look at some English language words that have been borrowed from the indigenous languages of the Americas as a whole, from Alaska and Greenland to the southernmost tip of South America. Many of these words describe plants or animals that are from the Americas, whilst others may describe aspects or objects from Native American or First Nations day-to-day life (such as wigwams and igloos). In this post, though, we hope to look at some words whose origins might surprise you! Anorak When you think of British items of clothing, you probably think of wellies and anoraks long before you th...
A little twist to the Word for Wednesday blog this week: we’ll be looking into the grammatical enigma that is the apostrophe. This week, the government has introduced a new spelling and grammar test for primary school children across the UK. Last year, Education Secretary, Michael Gove introduced a new policy which penalises students for poor spelling and grammar in their national examinations. This is the first time such emphasis has been put onto correct spelling and grammar in the education system. In my opinion, one of the biggest culprits for poor grammar is the misuse of the apostrophe. This is so widespread that one need’nt look far (did you spot it?) to find an i...
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