Words, Words and More Words!

loves words / devours words / breathes words / examine words / obsess over words / reach for a dictionary as soon as you see a new word / tries to impress people by using words they most probably wont know / tries to trace the history of a word?

If you are any one of the above, this blogpost is for YOU. Some online resources for all you logophiles (lover of words).

Words of a Feather is an online etymology game which is an incredibly fun game to play. Even when you get the answer wrong, you manage to learn something. Also enjoyable is the mildly sarcastic, yet humorous reply the game generates when your answer is wrong.

‘Words of a Feather’ is a book of doublets: word pairs that trace to a common source. An example is card and chart. Both come from the Latin charta, “leaf of paper”.

You can read the stories- etymologies- of 150 doublets in Words of a Feather. But here’s a chance to test your own doublet-detecting skills.

Start playing

The next online resource is podictionary – the podcast for word lovers!

Every day podictionary delivers a new short story about the history of a common word to thousands of subscribed listeners. Not only is podictionary an audio word-a-day, but as the number of words grows in the podictionary archive the website is becoming an on-line audio etymology reference of sorts.

And tick-tock-tick-tock, the New Year is just a day away. Check out this screensaver- Word Clock.

Word Clock is a typographic screensaver for Mac OS X and Windows. It displays a fixed list of all numbers and words sufficient to express any possible date and time as a sentence. Word Clock displays time by highlighting appropriate words as each second passes.

Image Sources: 1, 2