How to Check Whether a Word Is a Real Word
"Real" and "accepted" are different questions. We looked up 20 disputed words in four references and built a four-step check from the…
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Author: Kleoniq Kosova
Kleoniq Kosova is a writer in Tirana, Albania, who plays too many word games and got curious about which obscure words actually count. He writes The Verbarium's word lists, strategy guides and etymology pieces.
Running a Find the Word Game Night or Classroom Session
Everything needed to run Find the Word with a class or a family: a setup checklist, three session plans, scoring variants that…
Words With All Five Vowels: The Shortest, the Orderly and the Backwards
What a full scan of the word list shows about words containing every vowel: the seven-letter minimum, the six words that run…
How to Teach Silent Letters: A Lesson Plan Built From the Counts
A count of the silent-letter families in a 172,446-word list, the everyday words in each, why the letters were once sounded, and…
Heteronyms: Words Spelled the Same but Pronounced Differently
Heteronyms are words with the same spelling but a different sound and meaning, such as lead, wind, tear and record. Test yourself…
Kangaroo Words: Words That Hide Their Own Synonym
A kangaroo word carries a synonym of itself inside it, letters in order: masculine hides male, deceased hides dead. Here are fourteen…
How to Check a Word-Count Claim Yourself
Five word-count claims that circulate online, checked live on the public-domain ENABLE list with grep and Python: the real outputs, the places…
A Napron, an Apron: The Words That Lost or Gained an N
Apron, adder and umpire all lost an N to the article in front of them, while newt and nickname picked one up.…
Word Games for the Classroom That Need Only a Board and a Timer
Six word games you can run with a board, a marker and a timer: a letter race, word ladders, a category grid,…
How to Catch the Mistakes Spellcheck Misses
A spellchecker only asks whether each word is in its dictionary, so homophones, doubled words and "would of" pass. We tested it…