Sometimes, we come across words we don’t understand when we are reading a passage. You could just google the word to see what it means, but if you’re in certain situations, such as an exam room, you aren’t going to be able to do that. Besides, being able to work out what a word means …
A normal verb is just one word: go, see, eat or cry. However, a phrasal verb is formed by a phrase of more than one word. It is almost always made of two words: the verb and its particle, which often looks like a preposition but isn’t. Particles Don’t Just Occur in Physics For example, …
Have you ever wondered why people say and write “congradulations” to those graduating instead of congratulations? What we have here is a pun or play on words. Whoever first dreamed this one up must have thought it hilariously funny, and it would seem that others did too since it has caught on in a big …
Compound words consist of two words which can be used independently, but when joined together as one word or with a hyphen, form a new word. The funny thing with this is it can be quite hard to spot compound words. Think about the word “airport.” It consists of two base words: “air” and “port,” …
If you know your geography and have a basic understanding of the names of the languages spoken in European countries, this might sound like a dumb question. If you live in the US and you don’t know much about European countries, you’re much more likely to be confused about these two words. Danish people come …
If you’re looking to kill a little time using nothing but a pen and paper to entertain yourself and a friend, you have several options. One is the tried and true word game “Hangman.” In the unlikely event that you didn’t learn this game years ago, here’s how it’s played. One player chooses a word …
We love spelling in the US. We’ve even turned it into a competitive sport, but that doesn’t mean all of us know how to spell. While many of us rely on spellcheck and autocorrect, this can sometimes lead to unintended issues. Some words are plain tricky, and even our cousins in the UK (which invented …
If you have not yet closed your browser in a fit of abject terror, you probably don’t suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, the fear of long words. If you think this word is a rather cruel joke at the expense of those who have this phobia, you’re absolutely right. If you have collapsed into a quivering heap, …
There are hundreds of millions of blogs that exist, so if you happen to be one of those individuals who doesn’t yet have a blog, you might be wondering why you should blog. The truth is there are probably as many reasons to blog as there are blogs, but there are some general reasons why …
You’ve just completed the report for your boss or written a business letter, or finished off your paper for your college professor. You run it through spelling and grammar checks, and there are no squiggly lines to show any possible errors. You’re convinced your work is perfect, but unless you take the time to proofread, …
