Everyone’s familiar with many sites’ “word of the day” generators, and this won’t be much different. The key difference is that my words of the day are randomly chosen every morning, usually the first word that pops in my head. I try to stay away from common words and choose only the ones that most people wouldn’t bother to use in their everyday vocabulary. Like “superfluous.” That’s one of my favorite words, actually. When was the last time you heard it used? I also like “hyperbole,” and incidentally, these two words can be used in conjunction, as in “superfluous hyperbole.”
Why do I bother doing this? In truth, I find it extremely sad how much our vocabulary skills have degraded in the fast few decades. Kids are failing to make it to the next grade (which is called “deferred success now, if you didn’t know), words are constantly misused by adults, and have you seen how poorly people spell nowadays? I blame the internet. Not that I don’t enjoy using the internet, but every good thing has its down side, and vocabulary? That’s taken a major hit. “Tounge” has now replaced “Tongue,” and “physco” or other variations of the word thereof has become the common spelling for “psycho.” I think it’s an important matter that should be addressed.
I’d be lying if I said I understood every word that comes my way, or even the words I present in my “Word of the Day” section. More often than not, it’s a word I know how to use but don’t know the explicit definition of. And here’s the important lesson of the day: Look it up. It takes a less than a minute on dictionary.com, and you would’ve expanded your vocabulary base. That said, the section on the bar to your left will have a “Word of the Day” link. Click it have a categorized list of entries of my daily words from latest to earliest. As always, thanks for reading.
-Felix
