English isn’t the hardest language in the world to learn but it’s definitely a crazy one with wacky rules. Things that apply for some words, never seem to be considered for similar ones. Change one letter here and it can sound completely different there but sound the same somewhere else. It’s all pretty ridiculous.
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As far as humans are concerned, the world didn’t exist until, well, they existed. That means anything that happened before you were born is mere fairy tales and make believe conversation. But what about those words that filled those tales and conversations? When did they start existing? When were those words born? Well, the Oxford English Dictionaries is here to tell you what words were born the year you were born.
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Time to fire up Instagram and party like it’s, um, 2013, because ‘selfie’ has been named the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year.
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No matter how you feel about 2013 it’s depressing to learn that the two most popular words of the year, according to the Global Language Monitor, are "404" and "fail". You can’t paint a clearer picture than that.
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There’s a lot of slang associated with drinking. Three sheets to the wind. Hair of the dog. On the wagon. We all know them, we all use them, but most of us don’t know where they came from or what they really mean. Read on, and you’ll be the smartest person at the bar.
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Because language doesn’t really matter anymore to the Internet
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While Google’s word definitions may literally be a little odd at times
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Here’s one for the logophiles and the voracious readers: searching for words on Google now returns more than their definitions. So, next time you look up a fancy term, the definition box will also contain its synonyms, sample sentences and a drop-down menu that can translate the word into another language. The new results even give you a glimpse of a word’s origins and show a graph of how commonly it’s used over time. While a relatively minor update, it’s boosted by the addition of a new voice function: when you tap on the Search microphone and ask questions such as “What is the definition of / What are the synonyms of [a word],” a voice will read the first result out loud. All these features are now active on both desktops and Google’s mobile Search apps in the US, ready to lend a hand during weekend Scrabble parties.
Source: Google+
Grammar loving folks who love to point out where commas should be inserted instead of periods and how semi-colons are both simultaneously underused and overused, should pick up their red pens, furrowed brows and pitchforks at the fact that the definition of literally is literally no longer the literal definition of literally. The trolls who say "literally" when they’re being completely non-literal and say it as an exaggeration or emphasizing something have won.
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Though we know the real longest word in English takes three and a half hours to pronounce
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