Our Ever-Evolving English Language!

Words are constantly entering the English Language.  In fact, the English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original. Bedroom, bump, fashionable, moonbeam, generous, mimic, bet, advertising, gloomy, majestic, radiance and noiseless are a few examples.

Shakespeare wasn’t the only source of new words entering the English language. In fact, we've adopted words from other languages, such as robot, which was originally a Czech word. Additionally, as we continue to make advances in technology, we create and use new words. Internet, email, and google are popular examples. In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary added twelve new words. Two of these entries include clunker and geekery.

CHALLENGE: make up a word you think can enter the English language.

(hint: you can use some of the strategies Shakespeare used). 

Give your word a definition and use it a sentence.

You never know, your word could possibly enter the OED one day!

Math POTW #11 - Gauss Math!

Congrats to Richie, Leo, Calista, and Stanley for correctly determining that the smaller rectangles in POTW #10 were 4cm by 20cm (remember Area = length x width).

The latest POTW (#11) is below:

"Punny" Things!

A pun is a play on words. 

The OED definition: a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.

There are three common types of puns: homographic (plays off the multiple meanings that one word may have), homophonic (words which mean different things and are spelled differently but sound the same), heteronymic (words are spelled the same but they have different meanings and are pronounced differently).  

FUN FACT #1: The etymology of the word pun is unclear; it was probably clipped from a longer word during the late 1600's (at or after the Restoration period) as this seems to have been a fashionable way of creating slang at the time. It is quite possibly from pundigrion which is perhaps a humourous alteration of Italian puntiglio, meaning "equivocation, trivial objection", diminutive of Latin punctum "point". 

FUN FACT #2: Puns don't always have the best reputation, Samuel Johnson called them the lowest form of humour and a very common response to a pun is a groan. But puns have been valued in the past. During the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) puns, and wordplay in general, were considered to be an important part of literature and Shakespeare is famous for his use of puns in both comic and serious works.

CHALLENGE:  The topic is “photography”. Come up with your best pun.  

Winner gets bragging rights and a reel flashy prize!!