With the start of each semester, the good folks at Merriam-Webster Dictionary online see a familiar spike in traffic, as students search for definitions to the pesky words in their new college assignments. These are the top 10! (By permission. From Merriam-Webster Online at www.Merriam-Webster.com.)
List produced by the Facts
1. Culture: The beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time
2. Irony: The use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
3. Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money); broadly : figurative language
4. Rhetoric: The study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion
5. Allegory: A story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation
6. Heuristic: Involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods
7. Aesthetic: A particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight
8. Diversity: The inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization
9. Plagiarize: To commit literary theft : to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
10. Pedagogy: The art, science, or profession of teaching; especially the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools
