National Nerd Word Day!
Celebrate National Nerd Word Day!
when? Saturday, January 9, 2021
Affiliates know that words are our means of communication. While people everywhere use words, many professions depend on them. This includes websites.
So, what does National Nerd Word Day mean?
Well, it can mean almost anything. You might celebrate by
- inventing some new words of your own.
- learn new words to use in your speaking or writing
- choose to learn how to say your favorite words in another language
- or find your own way to celebrate!
Of course, if you aren't quite a Word Nerd, you might prefer to forget it altogether. It is a choice.
For my fellow Word Nerds,
I gathered a few facts about words to share.
- According to Wikipedia, the English language has over 170,000 current words. The Oxford Dictionary has 273,000 headwords. Of these, 171,476 of them are currently in use, 47,156 being obsolete words and around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.
- On average, a new word is added to the English dictionary every two hours. Each year, we add about 4,000 new words.
- The shortest word is the word "I" which is also the most used and the oldest word.
- "I am" is the shortest possible complete sentence in the English language. It might be short, but it carries great significance.
- Some words are the same forward and backward. We call such a word a palindrome. You probably think of the simple ones like "mom" and "wow" (which interestingly convert to the other one of them when written upside down). But we have others, too. Consider the words "racecar" and "kayak."
- A palindrome phrase is seen in "never odd or even."
- When a sentence uses every letter of the alphabet, we call it a pangram. Examples you may have seen include:
- The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
I hope these little word facts help you as you write your next post.
Enjoy National Nerd Word Day!
Recent Comments
71
Interesting. I didn't know it was National Nerd Word Day but I love it. When I was a paralegal, I worked with 3 attorneys. Every day I would find a new, obscure word, post it by my desk and make each of them learn it and use it at least once during the day. They humored me and did it.
~Debbi
Wonderful word facts, Diane. Many, many years ago I worked as a Secretary in the Geography Dept of a University in Adelaide, Australia. One of my lecturers used to make up words for his journal articles - one such word was "neighborhoodliness". I never could figure out what it meant!!
Hi Diane
Living languages are indeed interesting phenomena and English is one of the most vibrantly alive languages today.
Having been around for a few decades and some, it is interesting to note how usage is changing. This can feel like people are no longer speaking and writing grammatically correctly, or one could stoically say that is just the language adjusting to the current times. Some observations I have made:
"Then" being used to mean either "then" or "than"
Many adverbs just being substituted with adjectives.
Long live word nerds I say.
Goodly regards
Andy
Yes, languages are constantly changing and evolving. It can be a bit unsettling when the meaning of a word changes over time. But change is bound to happen.
I like your phrase: long live word nerds!
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Hi Diane,
Great share!
Not many even knew there was such a thing as National Nerd Word Day (including me).
What does the holiday consist of or what does it celebrate?
You gave reasons and ways of celebrating it, but you 'didn't give any history or explanation of what the holiday is?
Care to elaborate more on this?
Willing to learn,
Calvin
The history of National Nerd Word day is quite vague. No one really knows who started it. But it's used as a means to encourage people to expand their vocabulary. A good cause, no matter the source, I suppose.
Good question, Calvin!
I try!
And thanks for the kind words and the short unknown history. LOL
It's been a pleasure,
Calvin