The holidays are upon us, and these winter celebrations with their many traditions each have a rich and varied vocabulary.
From Krampus to kinara, latke to plum pudding, frankincense to yule—there’s a whole host of fantastic holiday words to explore.
So broaden your lexicon and enter the holiday spirit with these fifty awesome holiday words!
A Latin word meaning “coming;” the Christian season of expectant waiting and preparation beginning four Sundays before Christmas.
A number of poor practices might be nipping away at your business’s productivity—without you even realizing it.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, poor writing was cited as a major productivity killer. But bad writing isn’t the only thing that can sink your employees’ productivity. Among a bevy of other potential reasons, experts have cited inflexible workplace practices, long hours, sterile office environments, and even emails.
Whether you love them or hate them, you have to admit, emojis have taken over. Following the latest update by the Unicode Consortium, the body that dictates language on digital devices, there are now 1,085 officially-recognized emojis in circulation. Five years after their introduction in the United States, emojis have started to dominate messaging and social media apps.
Articles are words that define a noun as specific or unspecific. Consider the following examples:
By using the article the, we’ve shown that it was one specific day that was long and one specific cup of tea that tasted good.
Miss, Mrs., and Ms. are not interchangeable terms. Choosing the wrong title can cause offense, so it’s important to know the difference between the three titles. The guide below will describe how the titles Miss, Mrs., and Ms. have been used traditionally—but remember, if someone tells you they prefer a particular title, that’s the one you should use to address them.
Ouch! Oh my! Wow! Yikes!
If you’ve ever uttered any of the words above, you’ve used an interjection, whether you knew it at the time or not. The word interjection comes from the Latin words inter (between) and jacĕre (to throw). So, an interjection is a word that you throw in between sentences or thoughts to express a sudden feeling.
Because interjections usually express sudden feelings, you’ll often see them used to convey surprise (both good surprises and bad ones) or excitement.
Chances are you encounter emojis on a daily basis. These adorable icons are popping up everywhere—in texts with friends and family, social media posts, and even in the movie theater.
But are they in your work emails? And—here’s the more salient question—should they be in your work emails?
Emoji use has risen steadily since their creation in Japan in the late 1990s. For many of us they’re now a normal part of digital communication, but do they belong in the workplace?
Job searching is like dating: each side involved is trying to find the perfect fit. You’re sizing up an employer to see if they’ve got what it takes to make you happy. The employer is evaluating whether you can make their dreams come true as a productive, successful team member.
However, much like dating, there are some behaviors that can be a turn-off. No, we’re not talking about things like mansplaining at the dinner table or endlessly sharing stories about an ex.
How do teachers motivate students to embrace good grammar 365 days of the year and not just on World Teachers’ Day? These ten grammar resources might be just what you need.
1 Visual Aids
If students visualize how grammar works, they will be able to understand sentence structure. For example, an infographic on Copyblogger.com explains what a dangling participle is. Here’s their example sentence: “After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.” The illustration of a zombie holding an orange helps students see that sentence structure matters.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
English uses the definite article, the, in front of some geographical names but not in front of others.
Typically, the article the is not used before the names of countries and territories:
However, the is used before countries whose names are plural in form:
At your local coffee shop, do you ever see words that you don’t understand? For instance, what is java? Why is a cup of coffee called a cup of joe? Ordering a cup of coffee can feel like speaking another language! No worries, here are the meanings behind all the coffee words.
Let’s start with the words that just refer to a simple cup of coffee. The first and most puzzling is joe.
Job interviews are hard.
The anticipation and anxiety about doing well or messing up can be worse than a first date with a crush.
In our society, we place a lot of importance on job interview performance, which is why it can be surprising to see just how little many people know about interview questions and basic interview etiquette.
To help you understand whether you’re on track, we put together a simple quiz that will test your understanding of good interview habits.
Hard to spell but easy to use, an onomatopoeia (ahn-uh-mat-uh-PEE-uh) is a word that sounds like what it means.
If you think for a minute, you can probably come up with lots of examples. Hiss, snip, thud, clonk . . . Comic books are a great place to look for onomatopoeias in action. Pow!
Or, try thinking about a barnyard. Most languages have onomatopoeic words for the sounds animals make.
Most singular nouns are made plural by simply putting an -s at the end. There are many different rules regarding pluralization depending on what letter a noun ends in. Irregular nouns do not follow plural noun rules, so they must be memorized or looked up in the dictionary.
There are many plural noun rules, and because we use nouns so frequently when writing, it’s important to know all of them!
You screwed up. Now it’s time to own it. Knowing how to apologize is a crucial life and career skill. But when you write an apology letter, creating a permanent record of an event and your response to it, it’s all the more important that you get it right.
Apologizing is an art form few of us seem to master. We don’t want to admit our mistakes because we think that making mistakes reflects badly on our character.
While both similes and metaphors are used to make comparisons, the difference between similes and metaphors comes down to a word. Similes use the words like or as to compare things—“Life is like a box of chocolates.” In contrast, metaphors directly state a comparison—“Love is a battlefield.”
Here are some examples of similes and metaphors:
Life is like a box of chocolates.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
An infinitive is a simple verb combined with ‘to.’ For example: to sleep, to run, to fly, to hide
Remember this formula: Infinitive = to + verb
Infinitives can function as subjects, objects, adjectives, and adverbs. For example:
To wait for an answer seemed like a waste of time. (To wait is the subject of the sentence.)
I can’t stand it; I refuse to look. (To look is the direct object of the sentence.)
