Tip of My Tongue: Find that word you've been thinking about all day but just can't seem to remember.
posted by Miko on Jun 27, 2009 - 26 comments

The 50 words that generate the most click-throughs to the dictionary from the New York Times. The Nieman Journalism Lab reveals the words that sent NYT readers running to the Merriam-Webster. Key fact: Maureen Dowd is overly fond of the word "louche." If the post is TL;DR for you, here's the list in Wordle.
posted by escabeche on Jun 15, 2009 - 132 comments

A few weeks from now, English will have it's millionth word. Or will it? [more inside]
posted by Dumsnill on May 12, 2009 - 54 comments

Deepleap is a word game. Make words and fight against the clock. (via). There's another hit from 2000 about deepleap.org, but it has nothing to do with the word game.
posted by boo_radley on Apr 3, 2009 - 70 comments

Random word stimulation is a technique for generating ideas by associations with random words. You'll find more about it at this site and the relevant Wikipedia article. (Previously)
posted by twoleftfeet on Apr 1, 2009 - 13 comments

Save the Words. Do lost words still have meaning? Just because society has neglected them doesn't make them any less of a word. How do you get lost words back in the dictionary? With lexicographers scanning publications and other communication for words not currently housed in the dictionary, all you need do is use your adopted words as often as possible. Go, Adopt a Word. Like graocracy.* * - government by an old woman or women. [more inside]
posted by Tufa on Jan 29, 2009 - 37 comments

Wordchamp lets you view foreign-language web pages with definitions in your language as mouseovers (registration-only). [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jul 5, 2008 - 10 comments

Word Sandwich: The mystery five-letter word is somewhere between your "highest" guess alphabetically and your "lowest." It's essentially a lexical Guess the Number.
posted by tepidmonkey on Jan 16, 2008 - 28 comments

Buzzword is a fancy new online word processor by Adobe. (flash based)
posted by blue_beetle on Nov 8, 2007 - 52 comments

Jon Ronson decides "I'm going to tell my son the worst swearword in the world". His follow up article is also interesting. Incidentally, his "Bad Science" colleague from The Guardian did uncover a list of the worst swearwords from the BBC no less (and previously)
posted by rongorongo on Oct 23, 2007 - 108 comments

"Words & Stuff" is a column on wordplay. It lasted from January 1997 to September 2003. The six alphabets of content include pangrams, nonlimericks, monosyllabism, names for wind, Gilbert and Sullivan's Xena, Warrior Princess, and an interesting cameo in Hamlet. Other highlights, with more in the archives. [more inside]
posted by flatluigi on Oct 20, 2007 - 9 comments

Human Brain Cloud is a simple but addictive mutiplayer word association widget with a nifty Flash interface, brought to you by one of the founders of the Experimental Gameplay Project [previously].
posted by whir on Aug 25, 2007 - 11 comments

Use everyone's logic and vocabulary skills to figure out what the secret word is.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 20, 2007 - 27 comments

The secret Iraq documents my 8-year-old found. With a couple of keystrokes, you too can read the hidden history of the Coalition Provisional Authority, America's late, unlamented occupation government in Iraq.
posted by nevercalm on May 18, 2007 - 50 comments

Etymologic! - claims to be the toughest word game on the web.
posted by Burhanistan on May 4, 2007 - 53 comments

From A to craZy... basically its a word association game, i figure if anyone can solve it its the hive mind... via {first answer inside}
posted by ShawnString on Jul 20, 2006 - 88 comments

Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient. Oldie, but a goodie. All text, no pretty pictures.
posted by ontic on Apr 12, 2006 - 109 comments

Sarah Elizabeth Witt struggles to convey a word game [direct to quicktime] that caused her doctor to diagnose her as obsessive-compulsive.

"When I hear a word that starts with the letter U, I immediately gain access to the letter Y!"
posted by odinsdream on Nov 24, 2005 - 16 comments

JoeMyGod implores his queer peers: What's the Gayest Thing You've Ever Done? • ''That is SO gay! I've been thinking about that expression a lot lately. What does it mean? Is it a playground epithet that is simply in vogue with the grown-ups? Or is it a sign that gay culture is so integrated into the pop culture that even the hets now see the evidence of homo-style in their everyday lives, and make jokes about it?" A followup to the original post, Part II: Flaming Son of "Gay, Gayer, Gayest"
posted by dhoyt on Feb 4, 2005 - 94 comments

Ever wondered why they use K to record a baseball strike? How about the origin of eavesdrop? What about vamping on a piano? All this and more at the Online Etymology Dictionary.
posted by xmutex on Dec 9, 2004 - 18 comments

Further verification that fuck is fucked. The gradual emasculation of a word once obscene.
posted by the fire you left me on Oct 22, 2003 - 54 comments

Word 97 Users Abandoned by Microsoft? "Microsoft's flagship word processor has for years had a security flaw that could allow a criminal to steal computer files by "bugging" a document with a hidden code." Microsoft will fix the problem for newer versions of Word, but those of us who use Word 97 are more or less out of luck. As it turns out, the Microsoft Corporation page doesn't seem to have any easily accessible information on this issue.
posted by Joey Michaels on Sep 13, 2002 - 40 comments

Do you use Microsoft Word? Or does Microsoft Word use you.
posted by baylink on Jun 21, 2000 - 8 comments

Paul Ford's Ftrain has a great piece on Micrsoft Word, writing, and the web. His stream-of-consciousness essay has hilarious nuggets like the "computer science axiom 'all software expands until it can send mail.'" There's a couple illustrations worth noting: the first looks like Word with all the tool bar icons enabled, and the other is Word's paperclip assistant interfering with an especially private moment. Great stuff.
posted by mathowie on Feb 8, 2000 - 1 comment

Word.com is back to their former selves. There's also a new letter from the art director that sounds pretty sincere, and states all the reasons for the former yahoo-esque word.
posted by mathowie on Jan 28, 2000 - 0 comments

Finally! Microsoft released an add-on app for Word 2000 that allows cleaner HTML to be saved out. I've saved one line Word documents as HTML and had them turned into 10kb of bloated CSS markup. I generally avoid using Word at all costs, but most of the content I get for new sites are done in Word. Tools like this are indespensible.
posted by mathowie on Nov 15, 1999 - 0 comments

Stop what you're doing and go here now! It's an online anagram maker, put in your whole name, and set the word length as high as you can. At 3 letters per word the letters 'MatthewHaughey' spell out hundreds of phrases, the best shown below (punctuation by me):

Why hate? hug mate!
Heat may wet Hugh?
Eat Wham, they hug.
They wag meat, huh?
posted by mathowie on Sep 16, 1999 - 0 comments