note: I’m going to be posting some projects over the next few days. This is the first one. Next up-- the second one.
I’ve been subscribed to Dictionary.com’s word-of-the-day email service for awhile… not so that someday I can flex an over-sized vocabulary as a form of pathetic bragging, but so that I can understand someone if they are using those words and, plus, sometimes words can be kinda fun ( one of my favorite is defenestration ).
The problem is that I haven’t really learned any words from Dictionary.com’s word-of-the-day service. I log into my email account and glance through the word-of-the-day email. Within 5 minutes I forget the word’s definition. Within 10 minutes I forget the word. ( I guess this progression of forgetting is slightly better than forgetting the word first and then the definition. )
The cause of my forgetfulness, is, of course, my own personal laziness and lack of self-motivation to spend even a single minute trying to commit the word to memory. However, Dictionary.com’s word-of-the-day (and all the other word-of-the-day services I’ve seen) makes this easy to “get away with.”
So over winter-break I spent some time trying to make a word-of-the-day service that forces the user into taking a bit more time and using a bit more mental effort… which I hope translates into remembering more words.