WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of October 22, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month – and that’s today! This month’s winners are Justin Jones and Jonathan Katz. Congrats! We’ll be in touch soon to get your T-shirt sizes and addresses.

As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of October 15, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

Dictionary Day Contest Winners: Fictional Dictionaries

Happy Dictionary Day!

Last week we posed the challenge: to celebrate the birthday of lexicographer Noah Webster, make up a dictionary. A fictional dictionary, if you will. A fictionary. You get the picture, and you more than delivered.

We had a lot of favorites. There was the practical, like @TorchwoodPride’s “Intaxication A to Z, a Taxman’s invaluable Insurance against Flaws, Faults, and Forgeries.” There was the trippy, such as @lowdudgeon’s “The Synesthete’s Dictionary – Definitions supplemented with the most common associated colors, sounds, tastes & personalities.”

And we can’t forget the meta, like Kotonosato’s “The Dictionary Dictionary: From ‘The ABCs of Abacuses’ to ‘Zwilliger’s Concise Dictionary of Zulu,’” and @HansonHelen’s “Dictionary of fictional dictionaries.”

A dictionary we’d want to own is runner-up @ChromaGeddon’s “Real-time businessese plugin for video conferencing with translation eg ‘We need synergy’ –> ‘We don’t know what we need.’”

We’d gladly include on our already bursting bookshelves second runner-up @searchlight5’s “The Compleat Dictionary of Words and Phrases Commonly Used by Mimes” (perhaps inspired by The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation), at a very slim zero pages.

But there can only be one winner, and that would be @lowdudgeon and his “Dictionary of Autocorrect Replacements – Near-homophones (of a sexual, scatological or Freudian nature) for all common words.” So that’s where the iPhone gets its words.

Thanks to everyone for playing! All players mentioned in this post will get some lovely prizes. We’ll be in touch soon to obtain addresses.

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of October 8, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

Dictionary Day Contest: Fictional Dictionaries

Dictionary, by greeblie

Dictionary, by greeblie

[Photo CC BY 2.0 by greeblie]

We here at Wordnik love dictionaries of all kinds. We love etymologicons, idioticons, and synonymicons. We love specialty dictionaries, traditional dictionaries, and those that are crowd-sourced. We love dictionaries old and new. But what about those dictionaries that don’t exist but should?

In celebration of Dictionary Day, which takes place on October 16 and honors the birthday of lexicographer Noah Webster, we’re holding a contest. You may be familiar with The New Yorker‘s popular Questioningly column. Every week, readers receive a different challenge, such as Muppetizing a movie, making up a punctuation mash-up, or coming up with the worst job in literature, and are asked to tweet their answers (which are as many as they can think of).

The Super Dictionary

The Super Dictionary, by joelk75

[Photo CC BY 2.0 by joelk75]

Taking a cue from Questioningly, we’re asking you to make up a dictionary. It could be political (Mitt Romney’s 180s, A to Z), pragmatic (50 Ways to Leave Your Lover), or just plain silly (A to Z Guide to ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ Style). The only requirement is that it doesn’t already exist.

Tweet the title of your fictional dictionary with the hashtag #wordnikAtoZ. The contest will run from today until Monday, October 15. On the 16th, we’ll announce our favorites, the runners-up, and the big winner. Prizes await!

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of October 1, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of September 24, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.