I recently discovered the deceptively simple @everyword project from Adam Parrish. It’s a Twitter account that tweets a word from the dictionary every 30mins. Here’s the latest one:
propagative
— everyword (@everyword) June 13, 2012
It gets interesting when you look at how people interact with and around the tweets. Retweeting interesting ones, guessing at meanings, questioning whether something really is a proper word, looking forward to the rude ones and remarking at odd coincidences.
The account is pretty popular and each tweet sparks a conversation about language.
It reminded me of a review I once read of an REM song. It was a while ago – probably a single from New Adventures in Hi-Fi but I’m not certain. Anyway, it mentioned how Michael Stipe could probably read out the dictionary and make it sound better than the lyrics most other people sing.
Turns out a faceless Twitter account that reads out the dictionary and never replies to anyone can be more popular, provocative, educational and informative than a great many others out there.