When your family goes on vacation or other drives, do you read the billboards and, names of places and streets? It is a very helpful way to learn new words. The 1986 National Spelling Bee champion, Jon Pennington once said, "Studying is important, but sometimes paying attention to the words around you can help you just as much."
When my family went to Las Vegas last year, we drove by several places with strange names in Central and Southern Utah. I'll be honest: I did not take note of the cities and towns we went through, but I took note of the names of streets. One was ptarmigan, and another was caballero.
Here in Utah, I have learned words as well. One word is Mormon. Did you know that was in Webster's Third? Salt Lake City is the Mormon capital of the world, so that is how I knew that word. My choir has also performed on Temple Square many times. There is also a garden in Lehi called Thanksgiving Point Gardens. There are several names of flowers I learned or knew about when I was there. One of them was floribunda. That word was used at the 2010 national finals. I knew the word juniper, because there is a Russian Folk song called "Kalinka" which means juniper.
Here are some other words you may see:
kaolin
hematite
sousaphone
herniorrhaphy
miscreant
espionage
avoirdupois
caisson
trouvaille
chinook
divertissement
siciliano
Scheherazade
gnocchi
beignet
Word of the Day
Devanagari \day-vuh-nah-guh-ree\ [Sanskrit + Sanskrit] an alphabet usually employed for Sanskrit and also as a literary hand for various modern languages of India.
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