"Globally, English has become the leading media language for international communication," William A. Hachten and James F. Scotton write in The World News Prism: Global Information in a Satellite Age. But, they add, one of its appeals is that "it is easy to speak badly." The Internet can help you expand your vocabulary a word at a time. Wordsmith, a worldwide online community of about 500,000 readers, has been sending out a word-a-day since 14 March 1994! It was quite a revolutionary concept back then. You can sign up for the free service at A.Word.A.Day . How useful it will be, I don't know. This week's theme is 15-letter words like subintelligitur and infundibuliform , which don't exactly roll off the tongue.
Try OneLook Word of the Day instead. OneLook works like this: every hour a computer program selects five words lots of people are looking up in an online dictionary. "These words tend to reflect topics that have appeared in the world news or in discussion groups across the Web," according to the site. And the words look much more practical -- as well as shorter! Bookmark the site or sign up for home delivery.
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