Dictionary.com offer a word of the day e.g. Dictionary.com/Word of the Day/agon and a daily updated link for sites etc. Dictionary.com Any chance of this getting added to the site? I already get in in my e-mail but thought it might be of interest to the site. Possibly encourage creative use of that word daily / sentence containing that word? What do you think?
I like it. Our weekly Toastmasters International meeting does that as well, at the beginning of each meeting. The Wordmaster for the week presents the word, defines it, and keeps count of how many times it is used during the meeting. I don't know how much of that would be adaptable to a forum like this, but with the importance of vocabulary in a writer's toolbox, I would like to see something of the sort. The trickiest aspect of a word of the day, as I see it, is conveying not only the denotation, or literal dictionary meaning, but also the connotation, the shades of meaning that a word carries along with it.
Actually, i think something even better would be quote of the day, e.g a quote from a novel edit: ya really.
I think that's a good idea, but is there an appliction capable of doing that automatically, or would the quote have to be changed manually?
Manually would be a heavy task wouldn't it! I would say there is an application to do it automatically Anyway sorry to take over this topic, I'll make my own
I've thought about getting a quote of the day" feature but haven't gotten to it yet. Alternatively, we could have the word of the day feature. Either way it would probably be from another site (or I could acquire a database). I could probably fairly easily get a word of the day, but it would be like the exactly word as dictionary.com. Thoughts?
I'm in favour of it. Even if it is the same as dictionary.com, it helps build vocabulary, with some obscure words.
If we do this, it may be worthwghile if our eagle-eyed members watch for and mention spelling variations between different dialects of English, and perhaps any special connotations that the dictionary definition does not make clear, such as a word being very often used to imply a degree of sarcasm. These shades of meaning make the difference between just using obscure words and painting subtly shaded word pictures.
I like the idea, but currently any rss feed that has the word of the day that I can find simply clutters up the site (because the provider requires a link/description back to their site). This simply clutters it up to much. I'll try to keep this on the "wish list" but for now I'm going to have to say no, for the above reason. One solution would be for me to establish my own site with a word database, but that might be more work that it's worth.
Today's word: per·e·gri·na·tion Pronunciation[per-i-gruh-ney-shuhn] –noun 1. travel from one place to another, esp. on foot. 2. a course of travel; journey. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Origin: 1425–75; late ME peregrinacioun (< MF peregrinacion) < L peregrīnātiōn- (s. of peregrīnātiō) a traveling abroad. See peregrinate, -ion] —Synonyms 1, 2. trip, excursion, expedition. Reference: peregrination. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved June 24, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: peregrination - Definitions from Dictionary.com
Thanks Lp and Cogito - are we allowed to copy and paste the dictionary.com WOTD in this manner though? Wouldn't want any one getting into trouble, either on this site, or with dictionary.com?
This should be covered under fair usage, and I was careful to cite the reference. If this is a concern, though, submitters could give theri own definitions after looking up the word in multiple sources. Daniel, do you have any concerns with this? Or should we just scrap the individual contributions as too risky?
