Opportunity, and Other Words We Love
Most Popular Tweets About Words, Vol. 2
A selection of the most retweeted posts about words and language from @MerriamWebster.
Words We Love: "Opportunity" is rooted in the Latin for "toward the harbor." We hope good things come your way too, by land or sea.
Taking Pleasure in the Little Things: "pentasyllabic," which means "having five syllables," has five syllables. You're welcome.
Great Word for a Hot Day: "estivate" : "to pass the summer in a state of torpor" (usually used for animals, but perhaps you can relate).
"April" probably derives from the Latin aperire ("to open"), a possible reference to plant buds opening at this time of year in Rome.
Words We Love: "Hemidemisemiquaver," another name for a sixty-fourth note in music. Maybe the longest word for the shortest thing we know.
A few cheerful words for today's weather: frosty, frigid, glacial, nippy, polar, shivery, crisp. (Happy Cold Winter Day!)
Unromantic Word Alert: As a synonym for "beautiful," "pulchritudinous" is a risky choice (especially if you're rhyming it with "glutinous")
Words We Love: "Blockbuster" once referred to high-explosive bombs. Now the word often describes big-budget hit films. An antonym is "bomb."
Words in Your Pocket: The origin of "quarter" is easy to figure out... but "dime"? It comes from the Latin for "tenth."
Hoping our east coast readers are recovering well. A few good post-hurricane words we keep hearing: Compassion, Optimism, Resolve
