english language

10 American English Words To Baffle The Brits

8th May 2014

Brits and Americans often have no trouble understanding one another. However, there are still a few words and phrases that remain completely unalike. 1. Cookie These are called biscuits in the UK. Cookie in US English comes from the Dutch koekje, a small crisp cake. Dutch… Read More

Some of the best words that never were

3rd Apr 2014

A user of this website recently left a comment asking why we had chosen to mark as ‘rejected’ a word that another user had submitted. After all, the word had been invented and used by that person, so surely it should be included in the dictionary. This… Read More

International Mother Language Day: What does it mean to have a mother language?

21st Feb 2014

Today is UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. To celebrate the power of language, we’ve asked three non-native English speakers to write about their experiences of having a mother language. Valerie, native French speaker ‘Ome Sweet ‘Ome “Where are you going on holiday?”“‘ome”… Read More

Divided by a Common Language

2nd Apr 2013

Two expressions submitted to the website caught my eye for the same reason recently. One of these was the adjective ‘kick-arse’, submitted by an Australian user, and the other was the idiomatic phrase ‘preach to the choir’, submitted by a user in the United… Read More

Spelling Rules

28th Mar 2012

Twelve Top Spelling Tips Here is our list of the spelling tips we think you will find most useful. They provide an explanation of the English language’s key spelling rules (and their exceptions) and if you can bear them in mind you should be able to improve your spelling. Read More

Commonly Confused Words

28th Mar 2012

When two words are confused for one another the results can sometimes be comical, for example when affluent is confused with effluent or desert with dessert. On other occasions mix-ups between commonly confused words can result in a situation that isn’t so funny, for example… Read More

Misspelled Words

25th Jan 2012

Silent Letters English has lots of ‘silent’ letters such as the c in rock, the numerous final e’s in words like bake, cake, and make, or combinations of silent letters at the end of words like macabre and denouement. Also, we often have more… Read More