I wouldn’t say we’re “naming” the decades, we’re referring to them, and I don’t think that’s going to fade out anytime soon. We still talk about each and every decade of the 20th century by their last two digits. And now that a new century has rolled around, we’ll simply have to be more precise and say the “1930’s” instead of simply the “30’s”, which will eventually refer to the 2030’s. It’s nothing new, and nothing to worry about. Also, I heard my father and grandfather consistently refer to early 20th century years as “aught-six”, etc., and I am pleased as punch to find out that it will (hopefully) become the preferred nomenclature when we must refer to the decade.

I’m no expert, but I would assume it’s because simply adding “ic” to a noun doesn’t effectively convey the meaning of being addicted to something. “She’s a real workic” wouldn’t make sense to someone hearing it for the first time, so we have to use a little more context. Because “alcoholic” is so familiar, and relatively unique, adding more of the word makes the meaning more apparent. “Chocoholic” makes sense right off the bat because we recognize the reference to alcoholism and can deduce the meaning, but we can’t get that far from “chocolatic” or even simply “chocic”. <b>To sum up–because “ic” is so far removed from “alcoholic”, a more substantial and unique part of the word must be used in order to convey meaning.

Wow! I was really impressed with the site. The first word I looked up was my dictionary.com’s Word of the Day for today: copse. I was excited to find several definitions readily available, but tucked neatly away below headings of “American Heritage Dictionary” and “Webster’s Unabridged”. Next are the literary examples, and then, unexpectedly, come the real-time tweets. Each page is packed with pop culture references and thorough etymologies.Because the site pulls from user-created and maintained sites and incorporates those features into its own interface, some information is faulty, however. The examples, tweets and flickr images for the word “buss” were mostly referencing misspellings of other words and were therefore little help and of no relevance to the rest of the page. These errors are easily recognized, however, even if they do burst your initial bubble of wonder.

I wouldn’t say we’re “naming” the decades, we’re referring to them, and I don’t think that’s going to fade out anytime soon. We still talk about each and every decade of the 20th century by their last two digits. And now that a new century has rolled around, we’ll simply have to be more precise and say the “1930’s” instead of simply the “30’s”, which will eventually refer to the 2030’s. It’s nothing new, and nothing to worry about. Also, I heard my father and grandfather consistently refer to early 20th century years as “aught-six”, etc., and I am pleased as punch to find out that it will (hopefully) become the preferred nomenclature when we must refer to the decade.

I’m no expert, but I would assume it’s because simply adding “ic” to a noun doesn’t effectively convey the meaning of being addicted to something. “She’s a real workic” wouldn’t make sense to someone hearing it for the first time, so we have to use a little more context. Because “alcoholic” is so familiar, and relatively unique, adding more of the word makes the meaning more apparent. “Chocoholic” makes sense right off the bat because we recognize the reference to alcoholism and can deduce the meaning, but we can’t get that far from “chocolatic” or even simply “chocic”. <b>To sum up–because “ic” is so far removed from “alcoholic”, a more substantial and unique part of the word must be used in order to convey meaning.

Wow! I was really impressed with the site. The first word I looked up was my dictionary.com’s Word of the Day for today: copse. I was excited to find several definitions readily available, but tucked neatly away below headings of “American Heritage Dictionary” and “Webster’s Unabridged”. Next are the literary examples, and then, unexpectedly, come the real-time tweets. Each page is packed with pop culture references and thorough etymologies.Because the site pulls from user-created and maintained sites and incorporates those features into its own interface, some information is faulty, however. The examples, tweets and flickr images for the word “buss” were mostly referencing misspellings of other words and were therefore little help and of no relevance to the rest of the page. These errors are easily recognized, however, even if they do burst your initial bubble of wonder.