There is nothing more exciting than finding out about cool new words? Only me? Oh, that’s ok, I’m going to share it with you anyway. (Who likes my homage to Breaking Bad here?)
I came across a bunch of words that made me go “Huh, there’s an actual word for that?”
1. Collocation – A familiar group of words that typically appear together and convey meaning by association.
Example: black and white
2. Ambigram – a word that can be turned upside down and still be read as the same word.
Example: MOW or NOON
3. Contranym – This is a word that can mean the opposite of itself.
Example: oversight can mean an error caused by inattention, or it can mean supervision.
4. Antimetabole – a word or a phrase that is repeated in the opposite order in the next phrase.
Example: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
5. Diminutive – a suffix added to a word to mean little, small, or young.
Examples: piglet, starlet
6. Diacritic – A symbol added to a letter to change the pronunciation (usually on accents). Most diacritics used in modern English come from other languages.
Examples: café, cliché, mañana
7. Homonym – words written and pronounced the same way, but they have different meanings.
Examples: lie, fair
8. Homophones – words spelled differently, but they sound the same.
Examples: rain, rein, reign; beach, beech
9. Neologism – a newly coined word.
Examples: app, Google, staycation
10. Tmesis – a word or phrase that is split in two and another word is added in the middle.
Examples: fan-freaking-tastic; I am so not going camping
