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	<title>NewsFeed &#187; Katy Steinmetz &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>NewsFeed &#187; Katy Steinmetz &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com</link>
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		<title>Oh Yeah, Babe: Dictionary Adds &#8216;Slow Jam&#8217;, &#8216;Dad Dancing&#8217; and &#8216;Geekery&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/19/oh-yeah-babe-dictionary-adds-slow-jam-dad-dancing-and-geekery/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/19/oh-yeah-babe-dictionary-adds-slow-jam-dad-dancing-and-geekery/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:00:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[3D printer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[baked]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dad dancing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt trap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flash mob]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fly-over]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[geekery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gut check]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hand sanitizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[handholding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[handicapping]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[handyman special]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[head trip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[headbang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heart of darkness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kombucha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[live-bloggers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liveblog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lolz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mani-pedis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mwahahaha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oxford english dictionary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[post-racial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Red Velvet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smackhead]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[transphobic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tweet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=213419</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Four times per year, the Oxford English Dictionary fleshes out human history just a little bit more. After months of sifting and searching, their experts announce which words will be added, defining who English-speakers are. In this quarterly addition, we are officially live-bloggers. We get mani-pedis. And we most certainly enjoy a slow, smooth, romantic song with a strongly sexual feel—otherwise known as a slow jam. Word-lovers who peruse the more than 1,200 words inducted this month will find some clear themes. There’s technology (tweet, 3D printer, geekery). There’s eating (brat, red velvet, kombucha). There are drugs (smackhead, baked, head trip). And there are words associated with yuppie hipsters (mochaccino, sun salutation, hand-embroidered). There are also some bathetic gems, slang terms you probably never imagined alongside an academic definition—like dad dancing (n.): an awkward, unfashionable, or unrestrained style of dancing to pop music, as characteristically performed by middle-aged men. (Lop off the last clause and you’ve got a suitably unfortunate definition for white-people dancing, too.) Many of this quarter’s newcomers contain some form of head, hand or heart. That’s because lexicographers at the OED are revising their enormous reference in clusters. Rather than start at A and work their way to Z, they’re updating fertile entries first. Words such as hand end up inspiring oodles of related terms, from hand sanitizer to handicapping to hand-holding. Some additions that sound modern have a long, little known history. Take flash mob. Today a flash mob refers to playful performance art, in which groups suddenly erupt in public places, likely dancing to “Don’t Stop Believin’.” In the early 1800s a flash mob referred to a group of confidence tricksters or petty thieves, especially ones who assume respectable dress or behavior—before they snatch the family silver. “One of the best things about working on the OED is finding a history that isn’t what you expected,” says Katherine Martin, head of Oxford&#8217;s U.S. dictionaries. If some entries seem overdue, that&#8217;s partly because it&#8217;s harder to get into the OED than online dictionaries, which have welcomed the likes of mwahahaha and lolz. Here is a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=213419&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/dictionary.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">dictionary</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>What Is a Derecho? TIME Explains.</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/13/what-is-a-derecho-time-explains/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/13/what-is-a-derecho-time-explains/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:25:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
		
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=212620</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[derecho (n.): a large cluster of thunderstorms that produces widespread wind damage. Here we are again. About a year ago, a historic derecho tore across the Mid-Atlantic U.S., producing the highest wind gusts ever recorded in the months of June or July. Some 5 million people lost power and 22 lost their lives. The storm also hit major metropolitan areas—meaning that it got a lot more attention from the media and general public than derechos in years past. This week, weather reports indicated that another derecho could be upon us. So what, exactly, does that word mean and where does it come from? First, it&#8217;s pronounced deh-REY-choh. The word means straight in Spanish, a reference to the long lines of wind damage the storms can leave behind. By definition, if the wind damage is at least 240 miles long and gusts are at least 58 mph, the storm is a derecho. But the summer squalls can be even more severe than that, with winds topping 100 mph; a derecho that hit Michigan in 1998 had winds blowing at 130 mph. For the weather geeks out there, the government&#8217;s Storm Prediction Center goes into greater meteorological detail. (If you don&#8217;t want to read phrases like &#8220;convective downdraft,&#8221; skip this part): Derechos are associated with bands of showers or thunderstorms &#8230; that assume a curved or bowed shape. The bow-shaped storms are called bow echoes.  &#8230; Derecho winds are the product of what meteorologists call downbursts. A downburst is a concentrated area of strong wind produced by a convective downdraft [i.e. areas of downward moving wind that are smaller and more intense than other types of downdrafts]. As of Thursday morning, no derecho had materialized, but there were still severe thunderstorm warnings for the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. And as a Washington Post writer argued, the bottom line is that a big storm is brewing; people should try to be prepared, regardless of what it&#8217;s called. Spanish words are at the root of other weather phenomena. There is the tornado, which likely comes from tronada, meaning thunderstorm, and tornar, meaning to turn.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=212620&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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			<media:title type="html">Storm Washington D.C.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>How To Tell Race-Related Jokes in a &#8216;Post-Racial&#8217; Society</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/12/how-to-tell-race-related-jokes-in-a-post-racial-society/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/12/how-to-tell-race-related-jokes-in-a-post-racial-society/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:47:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[comedians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[comedy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[racist jokes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Raul Perez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sociology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[study]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=212410</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some Americans may believe we live in a color-blind society, but they&#8217;re probably not stand-up comedians. In fact, one aspiring sociologist believes that stand-up comedy is only going to get more racial. Race is still a huge issue in America, says University of California, Irvine&#8217;s Raul Pérez. But if it’s less acceptable to talk about race in public places, that increases the workload of comedians who can tackle taboos on stage. For his new study in the journal of Discourse &#38; Society, Pérez spent seven months in comedy classes. Based on more than 200 hours of fledgling routines and guidance from instructors, the doctoral student outlined techniques jokesters use when trying to make race funny in a “post-racism” world. “The novice comic and the professional comic alike need to invoke these strategies,” Pérez says. “Otherwise you get Michael Richards,” i.e. a reputation-wilting act that yields more empty tables than chuckles. As an observer, Pérez doesn’t pass judgment on all the techniques he saw students learn, and he doesn’t explore all the potential dangers or merits of racial humor. For better or worse, here are some of the lessons the 30-year-old recorded before comedy school let out: If you’re white, check yourself: Instructors, Pérez says, told white students to handle race material more carefully than non-white students. They were cautioned against opening with race-related jokes and warned that they could easily “cross the hurtline,” the place where jokes become more offensive than funny. Whatever they did had to be more sophisticated than straight-up ridicule, which was off-limits. “The hardest people for me to make funny are [white boys],” one instructor said. “They have less to work with.” If you’re white, set the stage: White students were taught to convince the audience that they weren’t really racist when telling a race-related joke, Pérez says. Some of the strategies they used are ones comedians might invoke before any controversial gag, like making fun of themselves in an effort to insinuate that everyone is fair game. Instructors also suggested expressing empathy (“I know white people have done a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=212410&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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			<media:title type="html">Stand Up Comedian</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Knaidel v. Kneydl: Debating the Winning Spelling Bee Word</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/05/knaidel-v-kneydl-debating-the-winning-spelling-bee-word/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/05/knaidel-v-kneydl-debating-the-winning-spelling-bee-word/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Jun 2013 20:57:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=211228</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One hundred years ago today, a newly elected President Woodrow Wilson sat down at the New Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., to watch a spelling bee. An equal number of newspaper reporters and members of Congress were going head-to-head in a competition that promised to determine “the best speller in the United States.” The event was much like the Scripps National Spelling Bee held last week outside Washington, D.C., with a few notable exceptions. Unlike a certain Congressman from Illinois, none of the participants in the 2013 bee misspelled the word satan. More important, the winning word from 1913 did not have complicated Yiddish roots that led to fights over matzo balls. The word that earned 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali a giant trophy on May 30 was knaidel, a Yiddish word for a small dumpling—or matzo ball—commonly scooped out of soup in Jewish households, especially during Passover. The day after the bee, the New York Times reported that America’s Yiddish authority, known as YIVO, didn’t agree with the spelling. Their experts would have rendered the winning word as kneydl. Experts at Merriam-Webster, the bee’s official dictionary, are meanwhile standing by their variation. So who’s right? The short answer is, arguably, everybody. Yiddish, a language mashing Hebrew, German and Slavic roots, was once standard usage for Ashkenazic Jews. The Yiddish knaidel, written in Hebrew characters, was derived from the German knödel—which means the word went through three languages and two alphabets before making its way into an American-English dictionary. “It ends up being a game of telephone,” says Peter Sokolowski, Editor-at-Large for Merriam-Webster. “We’re not saying that you can’t spell it any other way. We’re saying that it’s overwhelmingly spelled this way.” Sokolowski provides a caveat: that knaidel is overwhelmingly spelled that way in published English prose, like American-Jewish cookbooks from the 1950s. And he produces a graph from Google’s Ngram Viewer to prove his point. (For those unfamiliar, Google Ngram charts how often words have been used in certain corpora, like English literature, over selected time spans.): Merriam-Webster contains only one variation<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=211228&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/05/knaidel-v-kneydl-debating-the-winning-spelling-bee-word/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/matzo-ball.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Matzo Ball</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/screen-shot-2013-06-05-at-12-53-02-pm.png?w=753" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Knaidel Ngram Viewer</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>What You Missed While Not Watching the National Spelling Bee Finals</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/31/what-you-missed-while-not-watching-the-national-spelling-bee-finals/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/31/what-you-missed-while-not-watching-the-national-spelling-bee-finals/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 May 2013 08:19:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[competition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[espn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Florida]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national harbor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spelling bee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[words]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=210402</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The best spellers from across the U.S. demonstrated their semantic prowess at the 86th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in Maryland on Thursday. Eleven plucky finalists battled each other before millions of viewers live on ESPN. With a grand prize of $30,000 up for grabs, whose lexicon would endure longest? TIME was there every step of the way. (PHOTOS: Words with Foes: Spelling Bee Contestants Put on Their Game Faces) 8 p.m.: ESPN welcomes viewers to National Harbor, Md. Eleven spellers remain in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, out of more than 11 million. The kids march onto a stage that could be a CNN studio, if Wolf Blitzer were partial to honeycomb motifs. 8:05: The contestants are introduced: three from Florida; two from New York; two from Texas; and singles from Illinois, Kansas, Utah and Massachusetts. 8:06: The first contestant, a 14-year-old girl from St. Augustine, Fla., correctly spells greffier. The commentator calls this “an impressive opening salvo,” making it clear that the commentary will be a highlight of the evening. 8:07: Another girl from the Sunshine State correctly spells psephologist. “They’re not competing against each other,” says an announcer. “They’re competing against the dictionary.” Which is kind of like saying that high-jumpers aren’t competing against each other, just against gravity. 8:09: The announcers play up the drama of the match. Fourteen-year-old Amber Born, “the dark horse” from Marblehead, Mass., is also Bee Week’s resident comedienne. Teensy, tuba-playing Vanya Shivashankar, an 11-year-old from Olathe, Kans., has an older sister who won the bee; they could become the first sibling champs since the bee started in 1925. 8:12: A third young lady is asked to spell pathognomonic. She starts: “P-a-t-h-o-g-n-e…” A bell dings. The deceptively friendly sound means she&#8217;s out. The schwa, that vowel sound one hears at the beginning and end of America, claims its first victim. (MORE: Six Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the Scripps National Spelling Bee) 8:18: There are ten left. Pranav Sivakumar, a 13-year-old boy from Tower Lakes, Ill., walks up to the microphone. He is all business.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=210402&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ap196441494395.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Spelling Bee Contestants Put on Their Game Faces</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Six Things You Probably Didn&#8217;t Know About the Scripps National Spelling Bee</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/29/six-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-scripps-national-spelling-bee/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/29/six-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-the-scripps-national-spelling-bee/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 29 May 2013 19:41:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scripps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scripps National Spelling Bee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spellbound]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spelling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spelling bee]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=210084</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sassafras. Waterzooi. Koan. Quisling. Fraulein. The words were flowing at National Harbor, Md., on Wednesday morning, when 281 young contestants started the on-stage preliminaries of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. Some spellers wrote out the letters on their hands or the bulky placards hanging around their necks. Some fidgeted. One boy greeted the judges with “Howdy!” and another was derailed by langlauf. But in the initial hours of the bee, many of the 8-to-14-year-olds breezed through obscure words as easily as Justin Bieber racing through a red light. (PHOTOS: Spelling Bee Contestants Put on Their Game Faces) That is what anyone watching ESPN3 will have seen. But there&#8217;s more to the bee than what you get on TV. NewsFeed surveyed spelling-bee insiders to find out what people should know before watching the finals on Thursday: Where the words come from. “The first rule of the committee,” says E.W. Scripps Company spokesman Chris Kemper, “is not admitting that you&#8217;re on the committee.” He’s talking about the bee&#8217;s word committee, a group that works in secret all year to come up with the trove of spelling words used in the competition. “The committee is the secret sauce of the spelling bee,” Kemper says, &#8220;and the identity of those on the committee will not be revealed.&#8221; It&#8217;s kind of like Skull and Bones, just with more reading and less world domination. What makes a word worthy of the list. “A good spelling bee word is one that isn’t transparent,” says Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster&#8217;s Editor-at-Large, who is involved with the bee. That means double letters (braggadocio), single letters where you might expect double letters (sassafras), silent letters (mnemonic), and letter combinations that most of us never encounter. American Heritage dictionaries editor Steve Kleinedler points to mashups like the phth- at the beginning of phthongal, which means capable of varying in pitch. The speller’s most dangerous foe. Beware of the schwa, Sokolowski says. That’s the word for this phonetic symbol: /ə/, the vowel sound that we may hear in America, belief and history.  The schwa can be<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=210084&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/spelling-bee-2013.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Minka Gill of Kokomo, Ind., participates in the round two of the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee, in National Harbor, Md., on May 29, 2013.</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Let&#8217;s Go B-A-N-A-N-A-S: Annual National Spelling Bee Starts Today</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/28/lets-go-b-a-n-a-n-a-s-annual-national-spelling-bee-starts-today/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/28/lets-go-b-a-n-a-n-a-s-annual-national-spelling-bee-starts-today/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 18:00:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[appoggiatura]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[autochthonous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cymotrichous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[guerdon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guetapens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Laodicean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pococurante]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scripps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scripps National Spelling Bee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[serrefine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spelling bee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stromuhr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ursprache]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=209850</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s that time of year again. Today marks the beginning of the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, an intense, three-day competition in which brave kids march into the limelight near Washington, D.C.—and make average American adults feel like a bunch of dum-dums. Among the 281 contestants at the 86th annual event will be Tara Singh of Louisville, Ky., who clocks in at eight years old—as in the age most of us learned that there were these things called fractions. But young Tara is an anomaly. The oldest contestants are 14, and the vast majority, 89%, are between the ages of 12 and 14. The spellers hail from all 50 states, as well as American territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico. About two-fifths speak more than one language, an impressive stat that also helps explain why their tongues are so darn nimble. The competition, run by media outfits including the E.W. Scripps Company and various local newspapers, has two big changes this year. One is that the contestants will not only be asked to spell words on stage, but also to define them in computer-based tests off-stage. The other is that the on-stage portion will have quick-fire eliminations. Whereas in previous years, contestants got a second chance if they misspelled a word, this year one misstep will come with an invitation to take a seat for good. Both updates should make the competition more difficult and, officials say, help encourage a more robust knowledge of the English language—the spelling bee&#8217;s central mission. On Tuesday morning, the contestants were grilled on spelling and definitions via computer. All the contestants will then move on to live grilling Wednesday, which ESPN3 will broadcast starting at 8 a.m. ET. ESPN2 will air the semi-finals, starting Thursday at 2 p.m., and ESPN will take the finals that day at 8 p.m. (A bee spokeswoman says that only the preliminaries will be streamed live online, here.) Take the video quiz at the top of this post to see how you&#8217;d fare. Then peruse the list below of past winners,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=209850&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/screen-shot-2013-05-28-at-2-21-44-pm.png?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Spelling Bee</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Why F. Scott Fitzgerald Is All Over the Dictionary</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/08/why-f-scott-fitzgerald-is-all-over-the-dictionary/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/08/why-f-scott-fitzgerald-is-all-over-the-dictionary/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 16:16:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=207062</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[F. Scott Fitzgerald may not have coined the word stinko, but he may well have been the first English-speaking soul to write it down—according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In the historical dictionary business, finding the first citation is a holy grail. Lexicographers spend their days scouring texts for the earliest datable examples of words being recorded. And often that search will end with big-shot authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald—men and women who are famous today partly because they bottled up the culture of another era. The first citation isn&#8217;t absolute, but it is the result of a lot of research done by a lot of very smart people. In the OED, Fitzgerald’s name also crops up in the top citation for words like T-shirt, daiquiri and wicked (as in the way to describe cool stuff in the Boston area).  “We try to find the earliest recorded usage of every word in every sense, because we’re trying to tell the history of the English language,” says Katherine Martin, head of Oxford’s U.S. dictionaries. “Sometimes literature is the best first place to find things. Authors are innovators.” Martin does provide one caveat: some OED entries haven’t been revised since the dawn of the Internet, which means that  Fitzgerald may eventually be toppled out of first place. But for now, here are some of the earliest citations from various dictionaries that he can lay claim to—including some very non-stinko slang you can throw around during the current Great Gatsby craze: daiquiri: a cocktail containing rum, lime, etc., named after a district in Cuba. From This Side of Paradise (1920): “Here&#8217;s the old jitney waiter. If you ask me, I want a double Daiquiri.” doggone!: a general exclamation. From &#8220;May Day&#8221; (1920): &#8220;Doggone! Here&#8217;s some liquor I&#8217;ll say!&#8221; dopeless: useless; foolish; socially inadequate. From &#8220;Bernice Bobs Her Hair&#8221; (1920): &#8220;He had to admit that Cousin Bernice was sorta dopeless.&#8221; impactive: of, pertaining to, or characterized by impact; having an impact. From Tender Is the Night (1934): “Feeling the impactive scrutiny of strange faces, she<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=207062&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/f-scott-fitzgerald.jpg?w=112</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">F Scott Fitzgerald</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>The Meaning of &#8216;Squish&#8217; and Other Fun-To-Say Political Slights</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/01/the-meaning-of-squish-and-other-fun-to-say-political-slights/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/01/the-meaning-of-squish-and-other-fun-to-say-political-slights/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 19:38:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bafflegab]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flapdoodler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flip-flopper]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GOP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heeler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[joe biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lollie boy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mr. nyet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pollywog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[quockerwodger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rent-a-quote]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ronald Reagan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[senator]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snollygoster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[squish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ted cruz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tirekicker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wednesday words]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=206267</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Politics and playful insults go together like Joe Biden and jokes about him taking his shirt off. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz reminded the world of this delightful fact on Friday when he derided some of his Republican colleagues as squishes for opposing a filibuster of the recent gun control vote. So what is a squish? A rundown of political jargon published in 1992 by the Orange County Register offers this definition: A term used primarily by Republican conservatives to denigrate the perceived lack of backbone possessed by Republican moderates. That sense was de rigueur during the Clinton circus of the 1990s, used by the hardcore GOP to describe colleagues who hemmed and hawed about impeachment. But it goes back further than that. Conservative think-tanker Amy Ridenour recalls the word being in vogue by the time Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Digging into the term in 2006, she said that in the &#8217;80s, &#8220;a good working definition of &#8216;squish&#8217; would be someone who could not be counted on to back a conservative initiative for philosophical reasons.&#8221; Squish has also been used more broadly, to describe any liberal or conservative who avoids taking firm stands or doesn&#8217;t stand for anything&#8211;a politician who will sell out, who lacks conviction, who cares more about popularity than principle. &#8220;Clinton,&#8221; a Newsweek reporter wrote in 1993, &#8220;was haunted once more by his old nemesis, the Squish Factor: the impression that he had difficulty making up his mind, that he was too anxious to please, too eager to compromise, too easily rolled.&#8221; A squish is the opposite of something decided and intransigent, an entity that can be unceremoniously flattened and reshaped. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it simply as &#8220;a person regarded as weak and ineffective.&#8221; Ridenour recounts the theory that contact between British and American conservatives may be at the slang&#8217;s root: in British politics, as an Observer reporter wrote in 1981, being wet is to be &#8220;feeble, liable to take the easy option, lacking intellectual and political hardness.&#8221; And wet things do squish. Here are some other fun-to-say pejoratives that are<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=206267&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ted-cruz.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Ted Cruz</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>How We Talk About the Boston Marathon Bombing — and Why It Matters</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/24/how-we-talk-about-the-boston-marathon-bombing-and-why-it-matters/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/24/how-we-talk-about-the-boston-marathon-bombing-and-why-it-matters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:16:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=205268</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Obama chooses his words carefully — as he must — and deciding when and whether to use the word terror to describe an atrocity is not a matter to be taken lightly, as Mitt Romney discovered to his chagrin. When Obama first reacted to the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, he did not use the t-word — but less than a day later he he did, prompting observers to seize on the complicated implications of the term. Among the people following Obama’s every syllable is linguist Sandra Silberstein, a professor of English at the University of Washington and author of War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. NewsFeed spoke to her about other loaded buzzwords associated with the Boston Marathon attacks—and what they tell us about how the nation is coping. “us” versus “them” In times of national crisis, Silberstein says, the President and the media often use language that creates an “us” and a “them” — a set of victims and a set of terrorizers, good guys and bad guys. “It seemed pretty clear how to do that after 9/11,” Silberstein says. But it’s not so clear in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, particularly because Dzhokhar, the younger brother and only living suspect, is an American citizen. “naturalized” et al. In order to draw a sharper line between us and the terrorists, Silberstein observes, some people have clasped onto words that make Tsarnaev sound more foreign. Pundits talk about his “Chechnyan roots.” A Lexis news search turns up more than 300 stories that contain both his name and the word naturalized. And before the question was settled, GOP lawmakers were pushing for Tsarnaev to be treated as an enemy combatant — which is largely a legal issue but also frames the suspected bomber as more of an outsider than, say, criminal defendant. “regular Americans” “The question is: are they real Americans?” Silberstein posits. Or, in the words of Piers Morgan, regular Americans, as the CNN host put it when interviewing Tsarnaev’s friend Bassel Nasri on April 20: MORGAN: Does he speak with a particularly<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=205268&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/boston-patriotism-bombings.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Boston Patriotism Bombings</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Nine Things You Probably Didn&#8217;t Know About Swear Words</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/10/nine-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-swear-words/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/10/nine-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-swear-words/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:37:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=203372</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Four-letter words have been around since the days of our forebears—and their forebears, too. In Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, a book out this month from Oxford University Press, medieval literature expert Melissa Mohr traces humans’ use of naughty language back to Roman times. NewsFeed asked Mohr what surprising tidbits readers might stumble upon amidst the expletives. Here are nine talking points from her opus for your next (presumably, pretty edgy) cocktail hour. (FROM THE MAGAZINE: Help! My Baby Swears) 1. The average person swears quite a bit. About 0.7% of the words a person uses in the course of a day are swear words, which may not sound significant except that as Mohr notes, we use first-person plural pronouns — words like we, our and ourselves — at about the same rate. The typical range, Mohr says, goes from zero to about 3%. What would it be like to have a conversation with a three-percenter? “That would be like Eddie Murphy,” Mohr says. Presumably from Eddie Murphy Raw, not from Shrek Forever After. 2. Kids often learn a four-letter word before they learn the alphabet. Mohr&#8217;s work incorporates research by Timothy Jay, a psychology professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who uncovered the 0.7% statistic above and has also charted a rise in the use of swear words by children — even toddlers. By the age of two, Mohr says, most children know at least one swear word; it really “kicks off” around the ages of three or four. (MORE: Why Swearing Helps Ease the Pain) 3. Some of today’s most popular swear words have been around for more than a thousand years. “S&#8212; is an extremely old word that’s found in Anglo-Saxon texts,” Mohr says. What English-speakers now call asses and farts can also be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons, she adds, though in those times the terms wouldn’t have been considered as impolite as they are today. 4. The ancient Romans laid the groundwork for modern day f-bombs. There are two main kinds of swear words, says Mohr: oaths—like<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=203372&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/swear-words.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Swear words</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Q&amp;A: New BEARD PAC Supports Only Bearded Candidates (Mustaches Need Not Apply)</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/05/qa-new-beard-pac-supports-only-bearded-candidates-mustaches-need-not-apply/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/05/qa-new-beard-pac-supports-only-bearded-candidates-mustaches-need-not-apply/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:37:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abraham lincoln]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BEARD PAC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[campaign finance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[facial hair]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Super PACs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=202769</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A scroll through the super PACs listed on the Federal Election Commission&#8217;s website will remind anyone what a weird and wonderful place America is. There is a political action committee called Bears for a Bearable Tomorrow, another for Hall and Oates Fans and even one for Zombies of America. And as of today, Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy, or BEARD PAC, is officially accepting your donations online. BEARD PAC, as its name would imply, is dedicated exclusively to supporting candidates with facial hair. NewsFeed, understandably, had a few questions about BEARD PAC (what kinds of beards are we talking about here?  Is BEARD PAC anti-women? Do goatees count?), so we called up co-founder Jonathan Sessions, 30, who runs an IT consulting firm and sits on the school board in Columbia, Mo. (You can view his beard here.) In the fashion of Stephen Colbert, Sessions appears to be on a mission to satirize super PACs&#8211;but, much like the founder of Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, he&#8217;s determined to stay in character. So why did you start BEARD PAC?  We feel that individuals with the dedication to maintain and grow a quality beard are the kind of individuals who would show dedication to the job of public service. So it’s our mission to help these bearded candidates from across the political spectrum, in all levels of government, get elected. Does not having a beard show a lack of dedication? There are probably some very dedicated, highly qualified individuals that lack facial hair for whatever reason. But we do see that bearded individuals are underrepresented in office. Does this PAC discriminate against women? By no means. We actually feel that it’s unfortunate and horribly unrepresentative of our great nation that [there aren't more members of] Congress that are women. We want to see that exponentially rise, and we’re dedicated to supporting women who run for office. But at this time, we are firmly focused on the mission of electing bearded individuals into office. We won’t be using those financial resources to support<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=202769&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/05/qa-new-beard-pac-supports-only-bearded-candidates-mustaches-need-not-apply/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/lincoln-abraham.jpg?w=119</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Lincoln Abraham</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>AP Bans &#8216;Illegal Immigrant&#8217;: The Tricky Language of Immigration Reform</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/03/ap-bans-illegal-immigrant-the-tricky-language-of-immigration-reform/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/03/ap-bans-illegal-immigrant-the-tricky-language-of-immigration-reform/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:15:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=202495</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There’s a snappy saying used to promote cultural sensitivity toward Asian-Americans and their heritage: rugs are Oriental, people are Asian. The corollary in today’s national conversation about immigration reform might go something like this: “Actions are illegal, people are undocumented.” That is, unless you&#8217;re a reporter for the Associated Press, for whom the terms illegal immigrant and undocumented immigrant are now both verboten. (COVER STORY: Not Legal, and Not Leaving) On Tuesday, when the news service announced that its thousands of reporters would no longer be using those terms, it was a victory for activists who have argued that no person should be described as “illegal.” But the lack of suggested alternatives highlights a potential headache for journalists, politicians and others who regularly talk and write about people who are in the United States without proper documentation: which words do they use now? The Associated Press says their update is more about avoiding labels as a general practice than showing sensitivity to the immigrant community (though the editors did have meetings with such advocates in recent months). “We try to be fair to people’s feelings,” standards editor Tom Kent tells TIME, “but we’re not responding to one political current or another.” He says the change to the AP Stylebook, an established guide to proper usage and grammar, is no different than changes that have nixed other reductive terms, like wheelchair-bound or schizophrenic. “We’re trying to put the emphasis not on describing people but on describing actions or situations that they are in,” Kent says. (TIME discourages the use of the term &#8220;illegal immigrant&#8221; by our writers.) (PHOTOS: America&#8217;s Undocumented Immigrants) The easy fix, one pushed by many immigration reform activists, is to use &#8220;undocumented immigrants.&#8221; But AP Stylebook editors, being highly concerned about the precision and accuracy of their language, rejected that adjective too. That term — the one preferred by anti-I-word campaigners like Jose Antonio Vargas, who wrote TIME&#8217;s June 2012 cover story on immigration reform — is still too imprecise, Kent says: after all, an “undocumented” immigrant could have all sorts of documents, like a driver’s license or a birth<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=202495&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/03/ap-bans-illegal-immigrant-the-tricky-language-of-immigration-reform/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/146397456.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Immigration Activists Demonstrate In Los Angeles</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Seven Hang-Ups in the Language of Gay Rights</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/27/seven-hang-ups-in-the-language-of-gay-rights/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/27/seven-hang-ups-in-the-language-of-gay-rights/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:27:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american heritage dictionary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ben Zimmer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gay marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gay Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[husband]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marriage equality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opposite-sex marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[queer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[same-sex marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Steve Kleinedler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supreme court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[traditional marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vocabulary.com]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[widow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[widower]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wife]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=201472</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Marriage, as John P. Marquand might have said, is a damnably serious business—particularly among gay rights activists and same-sex marriage opponents. Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the legal definition of “marriage,” one of many words and phrases that embody America’s long cultural grapple over homosexuality. In this week’s Wednesday Words, NewsFeed takes a look at that lexical quagmire and six others: (LIST: 13 Parodies of the Human Rights Campaign’s Red Equal Sign) Marriage For years, lexicographers have pored over the term at the center of Supreme Court proceedings today, trying to tweak dictionary entries to reflect how all people use the word, regardless of their political persuasions. “Lexicographers end up in a no-win situation, where no matter what they do, somebody’s going to have trouble with the definition,” says Ben Zimmer, linguist and executive producer at Vocabulary.com. Some dictionaries, like the historically ordered Merriam-Webster, have added a second definition for same-sex marriage and left the main entry referring to a man and a woman. Zimmer points out that some gay rights activists balk at that fix, however, feeling a second definition suggests that gay marriage is second class. Other references, like the American Heritage Dictionary, have wedged more information into a single definition: “The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife, and in some jurisdictions, between two persons of the same sex, usually entailing legal obligations of each person to the other.” “It’s not that the word changed,” says American Heritage dictionaries&#8217; Executive Editor Steve Kleinedler, one of the editors who worked on the update. “It’s just that the scope broadened.” And these editorial choices matter: it’s quite possible that the Supreme Court Justices will include various dictionary definitions of marriage in their discussions or opinions about the cases they&#8217;ve heard this week. Traditional marriage Opponents of gay marriage are in a tricky spot when deciding whether to use the term traditional marriage. On the one hand, that language purposefully elevates heterosexual marriage as a more established, legitimate relationship. In a piece assessing journalists’ coverage of same-sex marriage battles<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=201472&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/27/seven-hang-ups-in-the-language-of-gay-rights/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/rainbow-supreme-court.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Rainbow Supreme Court</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Q&amp;A: Why Insults Exist&#8211;and Why One Man Wants to End Them</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/20/qa-why-insults-exist-and-why-one-man-wants-to-end-them/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/20/qa-why-insults-exist-and-why-one-man-wants-to-end-them/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:00:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[A Slap in the Face]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dominance hierarchy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insults]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[language]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wednesday words]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[William B. Irvine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=200422</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Philosophy professor William B. Irvine opens his book on insults with a story. A man rubs the bald head of his friend and says, &#8220;Marc, your head feels as smooth as my wife&#8217;s ass.&#8221; The bald man reaches up and rubs his hand across the same spot. &#8220;So it does,&#8221; he says, &#8220;So it does.&#8221; In A Slap in the Face, out this month, Irvine argues that evolution helps explain humans&#8217; tendency to hurl &#8220;yo mama&#8221; jokes at one another. In this week&#8217;s Wednesday Words, we asked him about the history of invectives and why he thinks humans would be better off without them. Let’s start with the most basic question. What is an insult? If you say or do something that causes another person pain, it’s going to count as an insult. It could be an accidental insult. You could even have been trying to praise them. But I’m calling it an insult if, in fact, a word or action on your part harms another person. You talk about the sundry ways we can insult each other, from burping to forgetting an anniversary. Would you say that verbal insults are the most powerful? Breaking someone’s knee I guess counts as an extreme physical insult, and that would have a dramatic impact, but &#8230; it’s quite possible for a verbal insult to do more long term damage. Ten words uttered in ten seconds can destroy a relationship that has lasted for ten years. The thing to keep in mind is: they’re just words, but they have incredible destructive ability. What is the secret to a really effective insult?  I say the highest form of insult is repartee. You take the insult and then you find a surprising way to turn the insult around. A classic example is Lady Astor saying to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee,” and he responds, “If you were my wife, I would drink it!” How did the advent of language change the way we insulted each other?  It<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=200422&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/20/qa-why-insults-exist-and-why-one-man-wants-to-end-them/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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			<media:title type="html">Comedian</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Madam, I&#8217;m Adam: Palindrome Masters Go Head to Head in Championship</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/06/madam-im-adam-palindrome-masters-go-head-to-head-in-championship/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/06/madam-im-adam-palindrome-masters-go-head-to-head-in-championship/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:08:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[competition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Demetri Martin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jackie Kashian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Flansburgh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mark Saltveit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palindrome]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[symmys]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wierd al yankovic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Will Shortz]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=198545</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For most of us, palindromes are just something we learn about one day in school. The teacher writes &#8220;race car&#8221; on the board, explaining that the phrase is the same backwards as forwards; minds are temporarily blown; and then everyone goes about their lives. But for true palindromists, crafting these linguistic mirror images is an obsession. And they&#8217;re about to test their best creations in a competition judged by the likes of crossword guru Will Shortz and &#8220;Weird Al&#8221; Yankovic. In this week&#8217;s Wednesday Words, we ask the judges what they&#8217;re looking for and preview some of the finalists. The first annual SymmyS awards for &#8220;outstanding palindrome achievement&#8221; were organized by stand-up comedian Mark Saltveit, who runs the online Palindromist magazine out of Portland, Ore. The prizes for this painstaking battle of the wits are bragging rights and pencils decorated with author Jon Agee&#8217;s palindrome &#8220;Todd erases a red dot.&#8221; Unlike another palindrome showdown held last year, there was no time limit on entries. Hundreds of submissions were narrowed down to 40 finalists, ten in each of four categories: long, short, poetry and word-unit (i.e. palindromes that reverse words rather than letters, like &#8220;All for one, and one for all!&#8221;). The criteria for judging were left up to the judges, whom we surveyed via email. Their ranks will determine a winner in each category and an overall champ. &#8220;Weird Al,&#8221; who names “Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo&#8221; as a personal favorite, says a winner should show a sense of humor or a spark of wit, as he did in his palindromic song &#8220;Bob,&#8221; which contains another renowned Agee line: &#8220;Go hang a salami, I&#8217;m a lasagna hog.&#8221; Many of the entries, anonymous until the winners are announced, certainly have a cheeky side. Take this submission: A slightly violent to-do list  Tape Roger. Go &#8220;Bang!&#8221; Get Cello. Collect egg. Nab Ogre. Gore Pat. Will Shortz, famed editor of the New York Times crossword, says that beyond humor, &#8220;The most important criteria for a palindrome are sense and naturalness of syntax.&#8221; Classics like &#8220;A<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=198545&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/pencils.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Pencils</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Republicans Prefer Pancakes: What’s the Point of Goofy Polls?</title>
		<link>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/01/republicans-prefer-pancakes-whats-the-point-of-goofy-polls/</link>
		<comments>http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/01/republicans-prefer-pancakes-whats-the-point-of-goofy-polls/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:19:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Food & Drink]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pancakes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[polls]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ppp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=197807</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=197807&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Politics</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/politics/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/pancakes.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">pancakes</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05bfb17f05eff70efc8061bb1a213e86?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Kimmies Harpin&#8217; Boontling: A Dying American Dialect?</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/27/kimmies-harpin-boontling-a-dying-american-dialect/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/27/kimmies-harpin-boontling-a-dying-american-dialect/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 21:49:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=197343</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Reporters and language geeks have long made pilgrimages to a hamlet in Northern California where rustics refer to men as &#8220;kimmies&#8221; and talking as &#8220;harpin&#8217;.&#8221; In Anderson Valley, an isolated corner of Mendocino County about two hours north of San Francisco, people speak in a hinterland dialect called Boontling. On Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle warned that Boontling, one of America&#8217;s few homegrown dialects, may be near extinction. By the Chronicle&#8217;s count, only 12 speakers remain. In this week&#8217;s Wednesday Words, we provide a brief history of the language and the people who speak it. The name Boontling is a fusion of the name Boonville — a tiny Anderson Valley town — and the word lingo. The invention has been traced to the late 1800s, when the town was filled with Scotch-Irish ranchers and farmers. Locals started using slang words for the standard English equivalents, many anecdotally tied to characters in the town. One origin story, relayed by a TIME correspondent who made the pilgrimage in 1969, is that local townsmen created Boontling so the womenfolk wouldn&#8217;t know what they were harpin&#8217; about. TIME&#8217;s Timothy Tyler provides some examples of how local people inspired words: &#8220;It was more fun to call coffee zeese, because it recalled old Z.C., a cook who made coffee so strong you could float an egg on it,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;Or to call working ottin&#8217;, after an industrious logger named Otto.&#8221; Legend has it that the verb for taking a woman to bed became burlap because one day someone walked into the general store and found the clerk getting down with a young lady on a pile of sacks. (Ah, romance.) Other words, such as kimmie for man, were taken from the Scotch-Irish dialects the settlers of Boonville brought with them. Others were euphemisms, such as &#8220;white spots&#8221; for &#8220;dead lambs.&#8221; In a language anthology published by MIT in 1988, Edna L. Sanders explains that Spanish, the local Pomo language and onomatopoeia also played a role. The term for riding on a train, for instance, is kelockity — just like the sound a train makes rolling down the tracks. All told,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=197343&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/27/kimmies-harpin-boontling-a-dying-american-dialect/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/anderson-valley.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Anderson Valley</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Words of the Week: What to Call Same-Sex Spouses, the &#8220;Obamaquester&#8221; And More</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/20/words-of-the-week-what-to-call-same-sex-spouses-the-obamaquester-and-more/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/20/words-of-the-week-what-to-call-same-sex-spouses-the-obamaquester-and-more/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:25:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boehner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[same-sex marriage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slang]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=195965</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And now, some of the more controversial and intriguing terms that have been in the news: partners (n.): the Associated Press&#8217; preferred reference for same-sex individuals in civil unions or marriages.  In a recent memo, editors of the AP Stylebook — a standard reference for journalists — said their default terminology for same-sex spouses is couples or partners, as opposed to husbands or wives. The memo includes the caveat that if same-sex couples use &#8220;husband&#8221; or &#8220;wife&#8221; in direct speech or &#8220;regularly&#8221; use such terms, then the reporter should feel free to use them, too. But that didn&#8217;t stop the memo from causing hubbub among LGBT advocates. Liberal outfits such as ThinkProgress argue that the edict amounts to institutionalizing a &#8220;second-class vocabulary&#8221; or advocating &#8220;separate but equal&#8221; language — while others have defended the AP, emphasizing that the editors did not &#8220;ban&#8221; the use of husband or wife when referring to same-sex couples, as some critics claimed. A popular Twitter feed that lambastes the Stylebook released their own guidance as the controversy heated up: &#8220;Avoid using &#8216;husband&#8217; or &#8216;wife&#8217; in reference to same-sex married couples,&#8221; wrote Fake AP Stylebook, &#8220;instead use &#8216;roommates&#8217; or &#8216;confirmed co-bachelors.&#8217;&#8221; flipped learning (n.): a classroom model in which the lesson is treated as homework and class time is used for practice. Using the &#8220;flipped learning&#8221; model, teachers might make videos of what they would have scribbled on the overhead projector. Students watch the basic-concept lessons on their smartphones or laptops before getting to class, and then class time can be used for more interactive practice. A recent AP article declares that teachers are &#8220;flipping&#8221; over flipped learning. Dogs must also be rejoicing that computers will now be the go-to scapegoats. obamaquester (n., slang): a pejorative name for the upcoming sequester used by critics of President Obama. The esoteric word sequester, a name for upcoming across-the-board cuts, has become widespread enough that politicians are fusing it with other terms. House Speaker Rep. John Boehner and other Republicans, anxious to pin the idea on Obama, have been trying to push Obamaquester into the public consciousness like Obamacare before it. Concerns about the sequester are ramping up, so we<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=195965&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/20/words-of-the-week-what-to-call-same-sex-spouses-the-obamaquester-and-more/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/dictionary-cropped.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Dictionary cropped</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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		<title>Words of the Week: Why We Call It A &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; Speech And More</title>
		<link>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/13/words-of-the-week-why-we-call-it-a-state-of-the-union-speech-and-more/</link>
		<comments>http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/02/13/words-of-the-week-why-we-call-it-a-state-of-the-union-speech-and-more/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:50:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katy Steinmetz</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Vocabulary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[elle fanning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[high-tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pronoia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[second screen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[State of the Union address]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teenagers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newsfeed.time.com/?p=195080</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In this edition of Wednesday Words, NewsFeed&#8217;s weekly language column, we highlight eye-catching terms from the news: State of the Union (n.): an address delivered by the President of the United States to Congress, giving the administration&#8217;s view of the condition of the nation and outlining its plans for legislation. The Constitution lays out some responsibilities for the President in Article II, section iii. Among them is from &#8220;time to time&#8221; giving Congress the scoop on the &#8220;state of the union.&#8221; But for more than a century, the big annual oration that the Commander-in-Chief gave to Congress was called, quite matter-of-factly, &#8220;the President&#8217;s Annual Message to Congress.&#8221; According to Paul Dickson&#8217;s Words from the White House, that changed in 1934, when Franklin Roosevelt turned the description of his obligations into a much catchier name for the speech. And it stuck. pronoia (n.): the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf. In tech blog  The Kernel, a writer ponders whether London&#8216;s &#8220;mollycoddled startups,&#8221; inundated with rave reviews and government encouragement, might be suffering from &#8220;pronoia&#8221;—the psychological inverse of paranoia. The above definition is adapted from one given by American essayist John Perry Barlow. Pronoia has also been described as “the sneaking feeling one has that others are conspiring behind your back to help you.&#8221; Here&#8217;s betting there are incredibly low incidence rates of pronoia in Washington, D.C., and Project Runway workrooms. second-screen (v.): to use a mobile device or computer to monitor and post social media comments about what one is watching on television.  &#8220;The mobile industry is working hard to create mobile apps and sites that relate to what&#8217;s on TV in order to capitalize on this behavior,&#8221; writes Business Insider in a new report, calling tablets and smartphones &#8220;TV companion devices.&#8221; The report calls watching TV while also using your smartphone &#8220;one of the most popular leisure activities&#8221; of our time &#8212; which humans should interpret as an emergency alert to take up better hobbies. ephebophilia (n.): sexual attraction in adults to adolescents, often in their teenage years.  For a spring fashion shoot in New<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=newsfeed.time.com&#038;blog=12783068&#038;post=195080&#038;subd=timenewsfeed&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vocabulary</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://newsfeed.time.com/category/vocabulary/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/dictionary-cropped.jpg?w=150</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Katy Steinmetz</media:title>
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