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Continue reading →: ailurophobia (ī-ˌlu̇r-ə-ˈfō-bē-ə)As Halloween approaches, people are busy decorating their houses with scary looking spiders, skeletons, and witches. Images of black cats are also a common decoration for Halloween; I see black cats with haunting eyes everywhere! In the United States, black cats are considered bad luck. But in other countries, like…
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Continue reading →: iatrophobia (īa‧trə-ˈfōbē-ə)Halloween is approaching at the end of the month and I am so excited! This is one of my favorite holidays; it’s a day to dress up in costumes and go trick-or-treating. It is the only day of the year my mom allows my sister and I to eat lots…
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Continue reading →: lipogrammatism (lipəˌgramə ti-zəm)Happy October! Recently, my English class received an unusual writing assignment from our teacher. Our assignment was to write a detailed description of our faces. This seemed easy enough, but there was a catch. We could not use the letter “s”. I thought this was going to be an impossible…
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Continue reading →: petroglyph (pe‧trəˌglif)
I hope you all enjoyed my previous post on pahoehoe! During our visit to the Big Island of Hawai’i, we hiked over fields of pahoehoe to see the ancient Pu’u Loa petroglyphs in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. The word petroglyph contains the Greek roots petro– , meaning rock, and glyph,…
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Continue reading →: pahoehoe (pəˈhōē hōē)
This summer, my family and I visited Hawai’i for two weeks. It was my first time going to Hawai’i and I loved it! We spent time on both Maui and the Big Island. Both islands were very pretty yet very different. Maui is older than the Big Island, has beautiful…
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Continue reading →: eulogy (yüləjē)
A eulogy is a speech or composition in praise of someone, especially one who has recently passed away. Eulogy comes from the Greek roots eu meaning good and log meaning word. It literally means “good words.” Midas was an adorable 14-year-old canine member of our family who passed away unexpectedly…
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Continue reading →: agathokakological (a-gə-thō-ka-kə-lä-ji-kəl)Happy Fourth of July everyone! I hope you all are having a great summer so far. This summer, I plan to watch all of the Star Wars movies again to prepare for the new movie, The Force Awakens, which premieres at the end of the year. One of the most interesting characters in the series…
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Continue reading →: Name That Animal: Challenge #2I am officially on summer vacation!! My family and I are getting ready to go on our annual road trip to Louisiana to visit my grandparents, but before I depart, I want to leave you all with a Name That Animal Challenge! If you did not get a chance to participate in…
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Continue reading →: Insider’s Guide to the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee – Awards Banquet and Party
The morning after the Championship Finals, spellers had the opportunity to explore D.C. We decided to go to the National Air and Space Museum which was interesting. That evening, we attended a fancy Awards Banquet, at which we honored the ten finalists. Afterwards, we all went to the Cherry Blossom Ballroom for a…
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Continue reading →: Insider’s Guide to the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee – Championship Finals
Vanya Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam were declared co-champions of the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee!! I watched in amazement as these two spellers exhausted a list of 25 extremely difficult championship level words! Gokul spelled the word nunatak for the win. Nunatak is a hill or mountain surrounded by glacial…
Hello,
I’m Tara!
My name is Tara and I am a recent graduate of Duke University, with dual degrees in cultural anthropology and political science, and a minor in linguistics. Twelve years ago, I started this blog to share my love of words with others and teach people about the intricacies of etymology and words across our beloved English language!
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