Wordchamp lets you view foreign-language web pages with definitions in your language as mouseovers (registration-only).
posted on Jul 5, 2008 - View this thread

Capitol Words allows you to see what the most often used word was on any given day in the U.S Congress. [via mefi projects]
posted on Jun 21, 2008 - View this thread

A poem that builds upon itself and grows as the world wide web grows. The Apostrophe Engine is a website operated by Bill Kenney and Darren Wershler-Henry. It is the source of the poems in apostrophe, a book published by ECW Press in 2006. The home page of the Apostrophe Engine site presents the full text of a poem called "apostrophe", written by Bill in 1993. In this digital version of the poem, each line is now a hyperlink. How it works.
posted on May 28, 2008 - View this thread

Monday Flash Fun: Alpha Assault
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - View this thread

Hot For Words - a youtube classroom series on etymology taught by Marina, a... hot Russian philologist. Mildly NSFW.
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread

The Most Horrible English Words
posted on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

Viz Comics have some wonderfully puerile games for you to enjoy- and needless to say, probably NSFW. Try your hand at Roger's Profanisaurus Hangman [Previously] Or play a round of Lesbian Tennis (PC only download, Mac users, you're not missing much). Perhaps you would like to keep a virtual pet, perhaps a Sim City style holiday resort game is more your cup of tea (Download). Full collection here.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

The Dictionary of Coming to Terms with the Past (Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung') examines over 1,000 German words that have Nazi connotations, such as Endlösung (Final Solution) and Selektion, It is featured in a review by der Spiegel. Such loaded words still constitute a minefield for Germans today, as the Archbishop of Cologne discovered last year in a situation analogized to Senator Biden's use of the term "articulate" when referring to Senator Obama.
posted on Feb 17, 2008 - View this thread

Six word memoirs: too short for
posted on Feb 6, 2008 - View this thread

Matrioshka Brain? Quine? Whuffie? - 75 Words every sci-fi fan should know, Science fiction citations at the OED, Swear words from science fiction, Neologisms in science fiction, Brave new words.
posted on Jan 16, 2008 - View this thread

“Subprime” voted 2007 word of the year by the American Dialect Society. Disagree? You had your chance to submit your own nominees, thanks to mo nickels on MeFi Projects. Pre vi ous ly
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

"This year, in a gesture of humanitarian relief, the (Lake Superior State University Banished Words) committee restores "truthiness," banned on last year's list, to formal use. This comes after comedians and late-night hosts were thrown under the bus and rendered speechless by a nationwide professional writers' strike. The silence is deafening."
Of course, "(thrown) under the bus"* is on this year's Banished List, along with "perfect storm", "webinar"*, "waterboarding", "post-9/11", "wordsmith", "back in the day", "surge", "x is the new y", "give back" and other seemingly "random" words and phrases.
*One of the requirements for a Banished Word or Phrase is that it has been used as a title for a Blogspot or Typepad blog.
posted on Jan 1, 2008 - View this thread

Wayne White's paintings
posted on Dec 20, 2007 - View this thread

The White Noise Supremacists: Lester Bangs on race, words, post-punk, and society.
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Snowclones (as you may know) are "some-assembly-required adaptable cliché frames": for example, "X is the new Y," "He's a few Xs short of a Y," or "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z." The Snowclones Database collects and traces the origins of lots of these.
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

Newsfilter: w00t! w00t! w00t!
posted on Dec 13, 2007 - View this thread

Worst Word Mashup Trademark Filings. From the guy who brought you the FARK NSFW shenanigans and the Dreamcast 2 foofaraw. Innovisioneering? Really?
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

Definr is an incredibly fast online dictionary. It joins other cool Web 2.0ish word applications, such as Wordie [prev.] with its hot words and great blog (see also their glossary of glossaries); the collective Madlibs-like idea generator that is Seedy; the TagCrowd word cloud creator; and, most importantly, the blog devoted solely to the word literally [prev.].
posted on Nov 26, 2007 - View this thread

"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.
posted on Oct 20, 2007 - View this thread

Top Two News Words (By Hour). "Top news sources are parsed by a computer every hour and the two most frequently used words are determined and printed out on a continuous sheet of paper." An art project by Rick Valentin, better known to late-80's & mid-90's indie-rock fans as the lead singer of the Poster Children. An updated-hourly RSS feed is also available.
posted on Sep 3, 2007 - View this thread

"The old, mean man" vs. "The mean old man." Here's an aspect of English (and other languages) I've never thought of before. If you're using a string of adjectives, there's a natural order for them to appear in: "opinion :: size :: age :: shape :: color :: origin :: material :: purpose". (Although I find "old, mean," due to it's strange order, sort of striking.) [more info: 1, 2, 3]
posted on May 19, 2007 - View this thread

Word Dissassociation A lovely little song made up of completely random words.
posted on Apr 28, 2007 - View this thread

Visuwords - an online graphical dictionary that uses Princeton's WordNet. Input a word and watch the branching associations.
posted on Apr 25, 2007 - View this thread

Got Playdar? Have you been seagulled lately? Find some great new words to insert into your work, family and friendly conversation. Have you seen that new bitcom?
posted on Apr 4, 2007 - View this thread

Contrived is the new original. via.
posted on Mar 10, 2007 - View this thread

Random Friday! pictures, confessions, quotes, wiki, word, kittens, livejournal, family circus, flickr groups, essay, comic strip, idea, haiku, howto, bullshit, inspiration
posted on Feb 16, 2007 - View this thread

28-year-old Tomomi Kunishige has created a new form of Japanese calligraphy, dubbed Eikanji (literally 'english kanji'), which uses the Roman alphabet to represent Japanese characters. Even if you don't study Japanese her calligraphy is still worth admiring, though it must be said that some of the paintings involve a fairly relaxed usage. (taken from Mainichi Daily News)
posted on Jan 31, 2007 - View this thread

Pompous Ass Words is a site dedicated to identifying words that shouldn't be used, on the grounds that doing so makes you sound like a pompous ass. With humorous citations and links to examples of pompous word usage by the media.
posted on Jan 27, 2007 - View this thread

Since Wordplay has come out, crossword puzzles have been on the rise. If you want to join in on the fun, read this primer by Will Shortz to get started, then download Across Lite, head to Cruciverb, and do free puzzles in the right-hand sidebar. Will Johnston's page contains a huge repository of Across Lite puzzles. If you get stuck, can't figure out why an entry is correct, or just want to chat about a grid's brilliant construction, try reading the crossword blogs. The best two are Diary of a Crossword Fiend and Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. (Caution! Spoilers abound!) And, if you want to try your hand at constructing some crosswords of your own (submission guidelines for various papers here), Crossword Compiler is an outstanding piece of software. [Via this AskMetafilter question]
posted on Jan 22, 2007 - View this thread

Truthiness Makes the Trifecta! As I predicted, the Classic Colbertism that won two Word of the Year awards has made it onto the 32nd L.S.S.U. List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.
Other linguistic losers for 2007: "Awesome", "Gitmo", "chipotle", "undocumented alien*", "pwn", "search**" (effectively replaced by Google), "gone missing", "gone bad" (applied to things already bad, i.e. 'drug deal gone bad'), "ask your doctor***", "now playing in theaters" (Dept. of Redundancy Dept.) and "healthy food" (healthful is healthier), as well as shorthand couple names like "TomKat" (Would Bogart and Bacall have been "BogCall"?), "i-anything" (lucky for Apple they didn't get that 'iPhone' trademark), men saying "we're pregnant" and "boasts", as in 'boasts amenities'. (Previously)
posted on Dec 31, 2006 - View this thread

Verbotomy - wordplay: create daily neologisms based on a given definition and illustration. (via Bifurcated Rivets)
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

Merriam-Webster's 2006 Word of the Year is NOT in their online dictionary. Officially coined on October 17, 2005, it had already won the American Dialect Society's 2005 Award _(pdf) where they claim that "other meanings of the word date as far back as 1824", and is probably a shoe-in for for the Banished Words of 2007 list.

A distant number 2 is our friend "the goog", and after that, it's all NewsFilter/PoliticsFilter/IraqFilter (with that all-time classic "war" at #4).
(From the MeFite who posted the Favorite Words of 2004 and the Banished Words List in 2003 and 2004)
posted on Dec 9, 2006 - View this thread

Wordie: social networking... for words. Catalog your favourite (or least favourite) words — make any variety of word lists, and connect to other users using the same words. Silly, but fun!
posted on Nov 29, 2006 - View this thread

Snap Shirts will create a word cloud from the most-frequently-used words on a web page and then you can order it printed on a t-shirt. (via iwilldare)
posted on Aug 23, 2006 - View this thread

Wikiwords is a collaborative project to create a dictionary of all terms in all languages.
posted on Aug 11, 2006 - View this thread

The Phrontistery presents A Compendium of Lost Words
posted on Jul 1, 2006 - View this thread

London's mayor suspended for four weeks for comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard.
posted on Feb 24, 2006 - View this thread

Clik. Clak. (embedded Quicktime video.) Short animated film featuring little robots who make their own language using Rube Goldberg contraptions.
posted on Feb 17, 2006 - View this thread

Were you a minger, sporting a mullet, looking a bit naff when you were getting mullered while out on the pull, anytime before 1988? Or were you posh and minted, looking snazzy after spending your dosh to get a nip and tuck before 1980? If so, the Oxford English Dictionary and the BBC need you for their Wordhunt – a call to help find the earliest verifiable usages of a list of words from the past decades whose origin is still uncertain.
posted on Jan 9, 2006 - View this thread

Grandiloquent Dictionary For all the logophiles. Not intended for those afflicted with ultracrepidarianism or logorrhea.
posted on Jan 9, 2006 - View this thread

The American Dialect Society has announced the 2005 word of the year. Sadly, muffin top, crotchfruit, Cruizasy (PDF file), and the obviously wonderful popesquatting were big old losers.
posted on Jan 7, 2006 - View this thread

Fsaturday Flash Fun: CryptoQuote. Other word games featured at East of the Web are the Tetris-like PopWord (and its multiplayer companion [beginner and advanced, respectively]), the MasterMind-like CodeWord, and the vaguely Scrabble-ish 8 Letters in Search of a Word.
posted on Jan 7, 2006 - View this thread

Test Your Word Power!
posted on Jan 6, 2006 - View this thread

Merrian-Webster open dictionary "Have you spotted a new word or a new sense for an old word that hasn't made it into the dictionary yet? Well, here's your chance to add your discovery (and its definition) to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary"
posted on Dec 11, 2005 - View this thread

We are a LAME FITTER, FALTER ITEM and A FELT TIMER. We need some MATT RELIEF. Fun with anagrams.
posted on Nov 18, 2005 - View this thread

A whole other newt with an ekename. I was looking up the origin of "nother" and learned about the phenomenon known as word misdivisions. Color me educated.
posted on Nov 16, 2005 - View this thread

Charming and unexpected vocabulary from many languages. Why did Persians need a word, alghunjar, to express 'the feigned anger of a mistress'? Could there really have been that many insincere mistresses in Persia? Why does Russia need a word meaning, 'dealer in stolen cats'? Or 'someone with six fingers'? And who can resist the Chinese xiaoxiao, meaning, 'the whistling and pattering of rain or wind'? "These are more than funny foreign vocabularies; they are tiny windows into the way other people live, and the obsessions that drive them." [via]
posted on Oct 2, 2005 - View this thread

Paul Murdoch Architects were recently announced as winners of the Flight 93 memorial. The design was called "Crescent of Embrace". The jury asked that the design team “Consider the interpretation and impact of words within the context of this event. The 'Crescent' should be referred to as the 'circle' or 'arc' or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography." Remarks from the families can be found here. [I haven't posted the other links for obvious reasons]. I don't think we've heard the end of this.
posted on Sep 22, 2005 - View this thread

Weasel words 'Spare Don Watson, author of Death Sentences from all of these weasely, wishy-washy, and worst of all, ugly bits of management-speak that have drifted out of consulting sessions and into the social realm.' Forbes.com..................... Your favourite spin doctoring ?
posted on Sep 6, 2005 - View this thread

A picture of English nouns is a map of 33,000 English nouns. Each tiny rectangle corresponds to a noun. The color of the rectangle has been assigned a color, based on an internet image search for that noun. The words are clustered so that similar words are near each other. Gallery. (Java required)
posted on Aug 14, 2005 - View this thread