words | THE LANGUAGE NERDS

40 Arabic Words Transformed into Illustrations of Their Literal Meanings.

Although it can be tough to learn and understand, the alphabet of the Arabic language is quite a sight to look at and a great source of fascination for those interested in languages. Fun fact, the Arabic alphabet doesn’t have any short vowel letters. Instead, it has what is called “harakat”_features_ that are placed on top, sometimes at the bottom, of consonants to indicate what vowel sound should follow.

23 Words That Are Their Own Opposites.

The English language never stops to amaze. Its grammar and vocabulary always reveal extraordinary linguistic patterns and quirks that very few other languages have. We have written numerous times about the craziness of the English language, why it has the features it does, and why it’s can be so confusing sometimes. Other times, English can be tricky, beware! It is filled with words that have contradictory meanings, or what is linguistically referred to as contronyms. A contronym is a word with two definitions that contradict each other. Here is a list:

30 Brilliant New Words We Should Add To A Dictionary Immediately.

One of the coolest aspects of language, any language, is the creativity and productivity of its speakers. Language allows you to express the abundance and infinity of your thoughts with any combination of sounds you want. And if there is no word for something you want to say, you simply create that word on the spot and start using it to mean what you want it o mean. And that’s pretty much the story of every word in the dictionary. People create all sorts of words for different reasons but a tiny few make it to a dictionary. They say that a word gets added to a dictionary every two hours. But I have no idea why these haven’t made it to any dictionary despite being the coolest words I have ever seen. They are perfect examples of what is called portmanteaus; mashing both the sounds and meanings of two words together to get a new one. So, here are 30 words that should actually be added to a dictionary because they are just cool.

21 Words That People Think Are Synonyms, But They Are Actually Not.

Let me let you on a little secrete. No two words mean exactly the same thing. You might, at first glance, think that the adjectives “hard” and “difficult” are perfect synonyms, but they’re not. I know you don’t believe this but a little example will help. Can we swap these adjectives in an example like “hard surface” and still maintain the same meaning? “Difficult surface” sounds so wrong that it triggered all the linguistic filters in my brain. This is why it is well established that perfect synonymy does not exist. And this is a good reason for you to be careful choosing your words. Just because the thesaurus lists two words as synonyms doesn’t mean that you can simply slot one in for the other. Here are the most common ones.

27 Times People Hilariously Renamed Things And Made Them Sound Way Better.

We give names to things around us almost all the time in a way that is totally random. The word cat, for instance, has no clue in itself that can help us guess what it refers to. But what if we took the task of naming things in such a way that you could guess almost accurately what they refer to merely by the combination of the words involved. As a funny attempt at this, we have named 27 things according to what they refer to and we think you will like them. Please scroll through them and let us know what you think.

54 Clever Illustrations of Words That Sound The Same But Have Different Meanings.

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of homophones before. They’re those words that are pronounced the same way but have different meanings and spellings, and this is why they confuse a lot of people. But homophones can be fun sometimes and because of them, we have jokes like this: What happens when a frog’s car breaks down? It gets toad away. If you think this is funny, you will definitely enjoy the treat we have prepared for you in this article. Bruce Worden is someone who is particularly interested in homophones and decided to make things simple for everyone. He created Homophones Weekly for the sole purpose of cleverly illustrating homophones in such an amusing way that everyone will not only enjoy but also get a perfect grasp of these confusing words.

41 Fascinating words from other languages we should definitely import to English.

No language has all of the words, and English is no exception. While you can express the complex feeling of “insecurity, fear, concern, and envy over relative lack of possessions, status or something of great personal value, particularly in reference to a comparator, a rival, or a competitor.” with one word (i.e. jealousy), some other very simple concepts need to be expressed with more than one word, like the day after tomorrow. With input from our amazing followers at The Language Nerds, we have compiled a list of some of the most interesting words that exist in other languages but have no equivalent in English. You really don’t want to miss any of them.

24 Non-English Words That Sound Dirty But Are Actually Innocent.

What makes languages so amazingly different is that they use different words to describe the same things. When you speak more than one language, you realize that words mean different things in different languages. Sometimes an innocent word in a language can sound really rude in another, and that’s where the real fun is. All the bad words in English have similar-sounding ones in other languages that are totally appropriate and sometimes they mean something really sweet. Below are words from foreign languages that sound dirty to an English ear but are totally innocent in their respective languages.

If Dictionaries Were Honest. 52 Words Redefined.

Words carry a certain social weight to them and that’s what dictionaries try to hide from us. Dictionaries give us literal meanings, dry most often, that can’t capture the different ways people use words and what they intend when they use them in different contexts. HipDict is an Instagram account that humorously redefines words and adds the honesty component to them. We have compiled the most relevant ones down below and we hope they appeal to you. Please share your favorites in the comment section.

17 Words You’ve Probably Been Mispronouncing Your Whole Life.

There is nothing more embarrassing and hurting to the title of a language savvy than mispronouncing words. A lot of people pick a certain pronunciation of a word and just go with it, mindless of the fact that that pronunciation is incorrect. Down below are some of the most butchered pronunciations of common words that almost everyone makes, even public and seemingly educated personalities. Do let us know how many you pronounced correctly.