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✨📕 The NEW Collegiate Dictionary — Learn More!
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Words at Play

What is a malaprop?

Editor Peter Sokolowski will tell you all the perpendiculars

A malapropism, or malaprop, is the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in context—like polo bears instead of polar bears.

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What is a malaprop?

 

We'll tell you all the perpendiculars

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Sneaked vs. Snuck

 

How the irregular 'snuck' sneaked into the dictionary

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Pictures in the Dictionary

 

The story of those iconic illustrations.

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Webster's Dictionary of 1864

 

The landmark edition that transformed the way dictionaries are made.

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Video: Why is there a 'c' in 'indict'?

 

And who put it there, anyway?

play serenity carr next to an illustration of a refrigerator with the letter d in it
Why is there a 'd' in 'fridge' but not in 'refrigerator'?

 

Thawing one of the mysteries of English

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Drive Safe: In Praise of Flat Adverbs

 

You don't have to end all your adverbs in -ly to talk right.

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