3 Word Lists for January This month we looked at words ending in ‘lar’, characters from Twelfth Night, and Burns night vocabulary. UN International Day of Education January 24 marked the UN International Day of Education which celebrated "the role of education for peace and development". Learn more. 22 Ways to Make the Most of your Spellzone Subscription in 2022 New year, new start! Are you using all the resources Spellzone has to offer? 3 Spelling Tasks to Set Your Students on Spellzone Have you set a task for your students yet? Tasks can be set alongside or instead of the ...
January’s Word for Wednesday theme is Janus words. A Janus word is a word with contradictory meanings. These words are also known as contronyms and auto antonyms. So far, we’ve looked at the words weather, dust and left. Today’s word is refrain. As a verb, refrain describes the act of stopping oneself from doing something. For example: Please refrain from smoking indoors. The boy refrained from picking his nose. I will refrain from saying what I think. As a noun, the word refrain describes repeated lines at the end of a verse. For example: There’s a refr...
January’s Word for Wednesday theme is Janus words. A Janus word is a word with contradictory meanings. These words are also known as contronyms and auto antonyms. So far, we’ve looked at the words weather and dust. Today’s word is left. The word left is used to describe the act of departing. For example: They have already left the party. The UK left the European Union in 2020. She left on her adventure around the world last week. It is also used to describe what is remaining. For example: There are plenty of people left at the party. How much food is left? She le...
January’s Word for Wednesday theme is Janus words. A Janus word is a word with contradictory meanings. These words are also known as contronyms and auto antonyms. Last week we looked at the word weather, this week’s word is dust. As a noun, dust refers to a fine powder made from microscopic particles of other materials that coats surfaces and floats in the air. However, like with weather, it is the verb forms of dust that have contradictory meanings. The verb dust is used to describe the act of removing dust. For example: He made sure to dust the house before his parents came to visit. I should dust those cobwebs away. We haven...
January marks the shift into the new year and is named for Janus, the Roman god of beginning and transitions. Janus is usually depicted with two heads – one looking back into the past, and the other looking forward to the future. With this in mind, this month’s Word for Wednesday theme is Janus words. A Janus word is a word with contradictory meanings. These words are also known as contronyms and auto antonyms. Our first Janus word of the year is weather. As a noun, this word refers to atmospheric effects like wind, rain, and snow. It is the verb forms of weather that have contradictory meanings. One meaning of the verb weather is ‘to withstand’. F...
If you’re one of our regular readers you’ll be familiar with articles about idioms, but every now and then we like to share a recap for our new subscribers. Here are Spellzone we believe that one of the reasons English is such a difficult language to learn is because it’s full of idioms. Every few weeks we take a list of popular idioms and translate them for our second-language English speakers. An idiom is an expression which has a figurative meaning rather than a literal one. For example, when someone says ‘needle in a haystack’ they probably aren’t actually talking about a needle and a haystack, but about something that is as difficult to fi...
Although it may be June, here in England it doesn’t feel like summer. With flood and thunderstorm warnings, and disruption on our roads and railways, this rain is more of a downpour than a shower. Still, it got us thinking about the word shower itself. While most of us probably associate showers with bathing before we do with rain, the word didn’t take on this meaning until 1859 (when it was first used as an abbreviation for shower-bath – a word attested from 1803). Shower comes from the Old English ‘scur’ meaning ‘a short fall of rain, storm, tempest; fall of missiles or blows; struggle, commotion; breeze’. It has been used metaphoricall...
Whether you prefer hot weather or the rain, make sure you aren’t mixing up your spellings of the words weather and whether (and wether). You probably only ever need to use two of these words, but we’ve included the third so you can make sure you aren’t using it by mistake! What does each word mean? As a noun, the word weather refers to atmospheric conditions, i.e. the effects of the temperature, wind, and clouds. If you’re writing about how your trip to the beach was ruined by the rain, use the word weather. As a verb, weather refers to the effects of these atmospheric conditions. If something is weathered, its exposure to the atmosphere had caused it t...
One of the reasons English is so difficult to learn is because it is a language full of idioms. An idiom is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning separate from the actual definitions of the words used. There are an estimated 25,000 idioms in the English language – let’s take a look at some of them that use the weather and environment as metaphors to describe something else. Cold light of Day – a time and place from which problems can be objectively considered Fair-weather friend – a friend who cannot be relied on in difficult times Under the weather – unwell or in low spirits To weather a storm – to successfully deal with a probl...
Having woken up to a bout of spectacularly apocalyptic weather this morning which has continued for the whole of the day, I felt moved to explore the etymologies of what are widely known as the four ‘Classical Elements’: terra, aqua, aer and ignis (earth, water, air and fire). ‘Earth’ comes from the Old English 'eorþe' meaning dry land, and by the time this word was widely used around 1000 years ago it had already began to refer to the earth in the wider, terrestrial sense. The word ‘Water’ as we know it comes from the proto-Germanic 'watar', meaning just that. Etymology Online suggests that Proto Indo European (PIE) had two stems for the word water. The most interesting of those can st...
Following the inevitably short-lived spell of wonderful weather we had in the UK this Bank Holiday, it seems only fitting that this week’s blog is weather-related! Just one slight twist, instead of looking into one just word, we’ll be looking into four… The seasons: four cyclic subdivisions of our calendar year that mark shifts in hours of sunlight, the weather and nature. But why the names 'spring', 'summer', 'autumn' and 'winter'? In the 14th century, what we now know as 'spring' was called 'springing-time', presumably a reference to the blossoming of plant life; the spring of the leaf. Through the centuries, the ...
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