1. Enter a long word.
2. Receive shorter synonyms.

deCopia is an online database that names, describes, and thoroughly exemplifies those manifold patterns of syntax and style that make certain specimens of English expression so interesting, effective, beautiful, and unique.

There are many different ways to cook eggs but most of them are purely of interest to invalids, children and the feeble-minded. The correct or 'proper English egg' is fried with lightly browned edges in the fat left over from the bacon. At the last minute, oil is flicked over the top of the yolk to seal it. This dangerous procedure causes the yolk to form a perfect, golden, viscid capsule, the violation of which with a rough shard of toast, is the nearest that an Englishman will permit himself to unbridled sexual ecstasy.

The smell of a ham puttering away in my own kitchen still reminds me of her – I suspect it always will – but mine comes with a welcome. Thickly cut ham, warm from its cooking liquor, is a dish I bring out to feed the hordes. Reasonably economical and brought to the table on a large oval plate with a jug of bright green sauce, it seems to go a long way. A kilo piece can feed six or more.

Roux is keeping track of words like rando for an assignment in a class she is taking on the grammar of current English, taught by Connie C. Eble, the resident linguist in U.N.C.’s English department. Since 1972, Eble has asked her students to compile lists of slang that they encounter in their everyday interactions, and this semester, rando is going on Roux’s list.

Management speak - don't you just hate it? Emphatically yes, judging by readers' responses to writer Lucy Kellaway's campaign against office jargon. Here, we list 50 of the best worst examples.

Crumpets are made from a thickish, yeasty batter and poured into rings. If you don't have rings, make thinner pancakes, or pikelets. Whether they are thick or thin, crumpets or pikelets, toast on the flattened bottom first and then on the holey side, so that maximum butter will melt into the crisp toasted holes. Now all you need is a big pot of tea, a fire and, possibly, a clean shirt standing by.

The word is douche bag. Douche space bag. People will insist that it’s one closed-up word—douchebag—but they are wrong. When you cite the dictionary as proof of the division, they will tell you that the entry refers to a product women use to clean themselves and not the guy who thinks it’s impressive to drop $300 on a bottle of vodka. You will calmly point out that, actually, the definition in Merriam-Webster is “an unattractive or offensive person” and not a reference to Summer’s Eve. They will then choose to ignore you and write it as one word anyway.

I've never worked as a journalist, but in the unremembered mysterious way that we learn most words, I somehow learned these terms and their idiosyncratic spellings. "Hed" is head, as in headline. "Dek" is deck, which is a sort of sub-headline, a phrase or two between the headline and the body of the article that explains what the story is about. "Lede" is lead, as in leading paragraph, the way a piece starts. "Graf" is graph, as in paragraph, often used in combinations like nut graf, which comes just after the lede, and summarizes the story's content. "Tk" should be "tc", I guess, because it's short for "to come", i.e. not yet written.

This site is dedicated to informing people about words that are not verbs, even though people misuse them that way.

"Colons, once on life support, are proliferating.

Why?

Because these aren’t Ms. Truss’s colons. The colons of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, are brittle, dusty, soporific. “Prepare yourself,” they yawn, “that I may shortly provide you a list.” To actually call these colons by name (syntactical-deductive, appositive, etc.) is to virtually lose consciousness. So bear with me for a moment as we first rechristen our colons."

"... passing triangles are only important for a side looking to dominate possession. For a side looking to disrupt that, 4-4-2 can be extremely effective – the famous "two banks of four" that for a long time seemed to be such a feature of any English team playing an away game in European competition. Fulham showed last season how effective the style can still be. Sit the midfield line deep on the back four so there is minimal space between the lines for attacking midfielders or deep-lying forwards to exploit, and it becomes very hard to penetrate. It doesn't matter how many triangles you create if you never get the ball closer than 35 yards from the opposition goal."

NEW ON ZM: Two friendlies lead Capello back to square one http://bit.ly/d8nXyM
– Zonal Marking (Zonal_Marking) http://twitter.com/Zonal_Marking/statuses/15051243296

"Polysyndeton is the use of several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted (as in "he ran and jumped and laughed for joy"). It is a stylistic scheme used to achieve a variety of effects: it can increase the rhythm of prose, speed or slow its pace, convey solemnity or even ecstasy and childlike exuberance. In grammar, a polysyndetic coordination is a coordination in which all conjuncts are linked by coordinating conjunctions (usually and, but, or, nor in English)."

'Cellar door' is often mentioned as being a particularly beautiful phrase - but who first proclaimed it so?

What do you call those peculiar headlines with noun/verb confusion? 'Crash Blossoms'.

Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage, by David Foster Wallace.