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Merriam-Webster Profile picture
@MerriamWebster
May 31, 2019 • 3 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
📈Our top lookups are never more delightful than during the #spellingbee final. Right now we have auftaktigkeit, karmadharaya, thymele, tjaele, jindyworobak, and huanglongbing hanging out.
And yes, those were all cut and pasted.
📈Now spotted at the party: omphalopsychite, Roskopf, rhathymia, urfirnis, limitrophe, hochmoor

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More from @MerriamWebster

Merriam-Webster Profile picture
Oct 7
We don’t mean to sound possessive, but let’s talk about how to make last names plural.

The plurals of last names are just like the plurals of most nouns. They typically get formed by adding -s.

Jill and Tim Smith→ the Smiths
the Clarence family→ the Clarences
If the name already ends in s or z, the plural is formed by adding -es.

the Fernandez family → the Fernandezes
Mr. and Mrs. Jones → the Joneses

For Names that end in y, you only need to add an s to make them plural

the Daley family → the Daleys
If you want to talk about something that belongs to more than one member of a family, you start with the plural form and add an apostrophe to show possession:

the Smiths' car
a party at the Fernandezes' house
the Daleys' driveway
Read 6 tweets
Merriam-Webster Profile picture
Sep 27
The plural of ‘attorney general’ is ‘attorneys general.’

This is because ‘attorney’ is the noun and ‘general’ is the adjective.

It’s not an attorney that’s a general in the military.

It’s an attorney with the most general jurisdiction.
Words where the adjective appears after the noun it modifies are called ‘postpositive adjectives.’

notary public
poet laureate
professor emeritus
court-martial

These words all seem….official.

Why?
For centuries after the Norman conquest,

Latin and French were used for England's royal documents.

Adjectives in French typically come after nouns.

When England switched from French to English in the 1400s these official words/titles kept their French word order.
Read 5 tweets
Merriam-Webster Profile picture
Mar 13
For no reason at all, here is a guide to British noble titles:

‘Prince’ comes from the Latin word that literally means “one who takes the first part.”

It shares its ultimate Latin root with words that denote firstness, like ‘principal’ and ‘prime’ and ‘primary.’
By tradition, only those born into the royal family can use ‘prince’ or ’princess.’

Even though many people refer to ‘Princess Diana,’ the title of ‘princess’ should properly come after her name, since she was not born into the royal family.

“Diana, Princess of Wales”
The title of Prince Philip, was the ‘Duke of Edinburgh’. He was also known as the ‘prince consort’ (husband of a reigning queen).

These peculiar titles with adjectives that follow the nouns are a byproduct of the French-speaking Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066.
Read 10 tweets
Merriam-Webster Profile picture
Dec 19, 2023
Rudolph gets all the love so let’s talk about the names of Santa’s other reindeer.

dasher | noun | one that dashes
dancer | noun | one that dances
prancer | noun | one that walks or moves in a spirited manner

Ok, those three are easy to understand.
Now, we get to ‘Vixen.’ ‘vixen’ is a noun and has 3 senses.

1. a female fox
2. a shrewish, ill-tempered woman
3. a sexually attractive woman

Ummm, what’s going on here, Santa?
comet | noun | a celestial body that appears as a fuzzy head usually surrounding a bright nucleus, that has a usually highly eccentric orbit, that consists primarily of ice and dust, and that often develops one or more long tails when near the sun

Both fly... so sure, why not?
Read 5 tweets
Merriam-Webster Profile picture
Jul 20, 2023
‘Hello’ has only been in use for about the last 150 years.

An older term used for greeting or salutation is 'hail,' which dates back to the Middle Ages.

This word is related to others that originally meant ‘health,’ such as ‘hale,’ ‘health,’ and ‘whole.’
Several variants of ‘hail’ are recorded, including ‘hollo’, ‘hallo,’ ‘halloa,’ and ‘holler.’

‘Hello’ was first recorded in the early 1800s, and was originally used to attract attention or express surprise.

“Well, hello! What do we have here?” twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
‘Hello’ really took off with the invention of the telephone.

Thomas Edison claimed to have initiated the use of ‘hello’ upon receiving a phone call—which required people to address an unseen and unknown person.
Read 6 tweets
Merriam-Webster Profile picture
Jun 15, 2023
What the $%&# is a ‘grawlix’???

The ‘grawlix’ is the character or series of characters that often appear in place of profanity—the visual equivalent of bleeping out a word.
The term ‘grawlix’ is credited to the late cartoonist Mort Walker (1923-2018), creator of Beetle Bailey. twitter.com/i/web/status/1… A "Beetle Bailey"...
While the term was coined in the 1960s, its use goes back to at least 1901. A cartoon from "Lady B...
Read 6 tweets

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