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Continue reading →: Happy Blogiversary to me!
Exactly one year ago, I started The Word Explorer to share my love of etymology with other people. I believe that words are beautiful and if you understand where they come from, it adds to their beauty. Two goals that I wanted to reach by my first anniversary were to…
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Continue reading →: bibliophile (bi-blē-ə-ˌfī-əl)Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is all about love, so I have decided to write about one of my great loves – books. I am a bibliophile. A bibliophile is a lover of books. Bibliophile contains the Greek roots bibli- meaning book and –phil meaning love of. The root phil- can…
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Continue reading →: mnemonic (nēˈmänik)
I recently competed in my school spelling bee and it was a lot of fun! Sometimes, when I study for spelling bees, it is really hard to remember how to spell certain words so I have to use mnemonic devices. Mnemonics are memory aids people use to remember things. For…
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Continue reading →: Oikos
One of my followers, Mr. M, asked me to write about the word oikos. Oikos is the Greek word for house. My mother mentioned that this is also the name of a company that makes Greek yogurt. The people who named the company probably wanted to persuade buyers that their…
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Continue reading →: polyglot (pälē glät)
Happy New Year! My New Year’s resolution is to continue to improve my Hindi using Rosetta Stone. I have a strong interest in learning Hindi because I have lots of family in India. Hindi is one of the official languages of India and is spoken by nearly 500 million people.…
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Continue reading →: Looking back… 2014
Happy New Year’s Eve everyone! I thought that today would be a good day to look back at my blog’s progress in 2014. I started this blog in February to share my love of words with others. I was very surprised that so many people actually took an interest in…
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Continue reading →: philanthropy (fə̇ˈlan(t)thrəpē)This season is all about giving back to those in need. Every year, students at my school participate in an event called Penny Wars. During the Penny Wars, teachers and students are divided into three teams according to their birthdays. We drop pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters in jars to…
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Continue reading →: Name That Animal Challenge #1 Results
Thank you to everyone who participated in my Name That Animal challenge! Canopteran, Canornis, and Cynocephalornis were the names that were submitted to me. If you haven’t participated, please take a moment to create and submit a name for this interesting “dog bird” here: Name That Animal Challenge #1
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Continue reading →: Name That Animal: Challenge #1This semester, I am taking a fabulous etymology class called The Witty Wordsmith. Recently, the instructor challenged the class to name weird animals that people had created using Photoshop. We had to use our knowledge of Greek and Latin roots to name the animals. I had a lot of fun…
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Continue reading →: nyctophobia (nik-tuh-foh-bee-uh)Happy Halloween! I am excited to go trick-or-treating tonight in my Bellatrix Lestrange costume. For those of you unfamiliar with Bellatrix, she is an evil character in the Harry Potter series. I’m glad I don’t have nyctophobia, otherwise I couldn’t go out tonight or any night! Nyctophobia comes from the…
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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