[HN Gopher] Show HN: A word of the day that doesn't suck
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Show HN: A word of the day that doesn't suck
I've long thought that the Word of the Day was a wasted genre. The
goal should be to give you words you can use; to enrich your
understanding of words you already know; or at least to use words
to tell you something neat about the world. Instead, what you
usually get is words that will never be used in conversation, held
up as curios. Some examples from Dictionary.com's daily email:
thewless, balladmonger, vagility, contextomy. These words are...
not useful. I've always thought I could do better. My friend Ben
recently created a daily puzzle game, called Bracket City, launched
here on HN [1], which I like because it takes about the same amount
of time as Wordle but has some of the variety and artistry of a
good crossword. Ben agreed to let me write a word of the day for
the game's audience. We've collected them all here:
https://bracket.city/words. It's such a joy to write -- every day,
I pay homage to a word I love or use or have newly discovered. I
find myself paying more attention to words I encounter, thinking if
they deserve a place. It's also fun for another reason. Many years
ago I wrote a blog post, "You're probably using the wrong
dictionary" [2], that made the rounds and actually still finds new
readers today. It was about how the modern-day dictionaries we find
by default on our iPhones and web browsers are actually kind of
bureaucratic and lifeless. Through a writer I love, John McPhee, I
rediscovered Webster's 1913 dictionary, which feels like it was
written by a thinking person who loved words. I still consult it
all the time. Writing a word of the day has reminded me just how
delightful and useful Webster's old dictionary is -- and
reacquainted me with the OED, which I now look to every day, and
which I discovered you can access with your library card. Some of
my favorite entries so far: sophisticated, twee, gravitas,
blockbuster, meteorologist, send, bid. There are more than 175 now
-- and more coming once a day, every day, for as long as Bracket
City stands. To sign up to see each word of the day as it's
published, go to https://bracket.city/words. [1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622719 [2]
https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
Author : jsomers
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-07-22 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got
| licensed by The Atlantic_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622719 - April 2025 (169
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Bracket City - A daily, exploded (?) crossword puzzle_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43160542 - Feb 2025 (53
| comments)
| Y_Y wrote:
| No cap, but the first ten-ish were already well known to me.
| Might be worth mentioning you're pitching below not-particularly-
| well-read this guy.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| With entries like "marketing" the point must be in the
| elaboration and not in the introduction of the word
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Bruh said "no cap" on HN
| janfoeh wrote:
| > Bruh
|
| Those who live in glass houses should not attempt to hang
| paintings, methinks.
| 1attice wrote:
| They could use those little sticky velcro 'Commander'
| strips and it would work out ok
| janfoeh wrote:
| Point well taken.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Could it be at all possible that I did that on purpose?
| Perchance I chose to make the exact "mistake" the GP made,
| _and_ call him out for it at the same time because the
| irony of it would be funny?
|
| You must think other people are deeply, abysmally,
| troglodytically stupid if you thought one could make that
| comment without self-awareness.
| janfoeh wrote:
| Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. If you did, then maybe
| you did not do a very good job of communicating that? I
| mean, until telepathy over TCP finally arrives, all we
| have to go on is basically ASCII.
|
| > You must think other people are deeply, abysmally,
| troglodytically stupid if you thought one could make that
| comment without self-awareness.
|
| I suspect you inhabit a different part of the Internet
| than me. I envy you.
| xnx wrote:
| https://wordsmith.org/words/today.html doesn't suck
| wnc3141 wrote:
| I think it would be interesting to incorporate loan words or
| phrases. Often these words become loan words because there's no
| good English equivalents so loan words/phrases sort of expand our
| ability to grapple these concepts.
| InspGadget4343 wrote:
| how very entrepreneurial of you
| seabass wrote:
| When it comes to getting a deeper understanding of words you
| already know, two of my favorite resources are Etymonline [1] and
| the 1913 edition of Webster's dictionary [2]. And if you're
| curious why 1913 specifically, this post [3] gives a great
| overview.
|
| [1] https://www.etymonline.com/
|
| [2] https://www.websters1913.com/
|
| [3] https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
| fsckboy wrote:
| what would make a "word of the day" stream compelling to me would
| be a word that reflected recent news. William Safire did this to
| some extent in his weekly column in the NY Times and it was
| usually pretty interesting.
|
| a way to increase the discovery of relevance could be looking up
| the etymologies of words that pop up, I'm always fascinated by
| how complex and interesting etymologies are
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(page generated 2025-07-22 23:02 UTC)