Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy New Words to you!

One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year is one that I found all by myself: the 365 New Words a Year calendar (compiled by Merriam Webster, Workman Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7611-5258-3). It'a a typical "word-a-day" calendar, but on the back of each page is a little "did you know?" about the word--a discussion regarding the pronunciation, how it came into English, its usage compared to other similar words, and the like. I'm happy to have a new source of Bee words, because we are aiming to have the list available by mid-February, and suddenly that seems just around the corner! Experienced Bee players will recognize a number of the words, but that shouldn't stop you from checking it out. Save yourself some consternation; a little bit of study each day should keep you from feeling compunctious on the last Thursday in March! After all, the Bee words are not going to land in your brain via afflatus, are they? Get to work; I am!

And if you find any interesting and challenging words along the way, send them to me here and I'll talk about them. (Next installment: terpsichorean, thanks to Will.)

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