Photo by, and licensed (CC BY-NC 2.0) from, cuellar.
Spring is always a time for new growth, and we’re certainly growing here at Wordnik!
Some new stuff we think you’d like:
- We now have a beta mobile site at http://m.wordnik.com, optimized for small-screen devices.
- We have more new (and better!) example sentences, from new sources, with more on the way soon.
- Check out our improved word frequency charts!
- The Wordnik Word of the Day is now available as a daily email. You can sign up for it now by logging in to Wordnik and editing your preferences.
- Our new autoexpanding comment areas make it easier to write and edit comments of more than a few lines (for when you have a lot to say about a particular word).
- You’ll find improved definition data from the GNU Webster’s 1913 dictionary, available both on the site and through the API.
- Developers, check out the New API calls for retrieving examples, related words (synonyms, antonyms, and the like), phrases, and definitions by part of speech. Support for JSONP is now available as well.
- Our corpus is now using mongodb under the hood, providing improved performance now, and interesting feature possibilities down the road.
- And just for fun, follow us on Twitter and Facebook to play SECRET WORD WEDNESDAY! Guess the SECRET WORD OF THE DAY, and win Wordnik stickers!
Hungry for more? Email us at feedback@wordnik.com and let us know what you’d like to see!
Also — for all you developers out there, keep an eye out for details of Wordnik’s first developer contest! We’ll be making an announcement this Friday …
Today’s word of the day is roundhand (or round hand or round-hand), a style of penmanship in which the letters are round and full rather than angular.
Photo by Luigi Crespo. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Today’s word of the day is barratry, which is, among other meanings, the offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones. Someone who commits barratry is a barrator, a “a common mover and maintainer of suits and controversies.”
“He is such a litigious fellow, though; so persistent with it; barratry, champerty, mad incorrigibility: he’s the wildest man of genius alive.” (From The Entailed Hat Or, Patty Cannon’s Times.)
Today’s word of the day is schlep, a word from Yiddish that means “to carry clumsily or with difficulty,” “to lug,” or “to move slowly or laboriously.”
Today’s word of the day is pinchbeck, in the sense of “a cheap imitation.” It’s part of today’s list of the day, “not quite the real thing,” which contains words related to fakes, frauds, lies, and tricks.
Today’s word of the day is slub:
1. transitive verb To draw out and twist (a strand of silk or other textile fiber) in preparation for spinning.
2. noun A soft thick nub in yarn that is either an imperfection or purposely set for a desired effect.
3. noun A slightly twisted roll of fiber, as of silk or cotton.
Today’s word of the day (expression of the day?) is sub judice, an adverb indicating something is under judicial deliberation or before a judge or court of law. One might write, “When a case is pending or is ongoing, those connected with the case must refrain from talking about it to anyone because it is sub judice.”
A similar term is coram judice, before a judge having legal jurisdiction of the matter.
And there’s me judice, which means, “I being the judge” or “in my opinion.” An example use: “You have a fine chance (me judice) at this moment to put the popular feeling toward England into verse which shall ring from one end of the country to the other.”
