Friday, December 18, 2009

Vocabular Lesson for Young People: Horde vs. Hoard

Today's bonus post is by special request! A former co-worker of mine (hi Hillary!) asked that I explain to the Young People the difference between horde and hoard. She makes a great point, as illustrated in the above screenshot from the Wikipedia entry for "horde." Following yesterday's enlightening vocabulary lesson, I felt up for the challenge! Let's dive right in. Let's not hold back! Let's go there.

Hoard: To collect and store items. She hoarded all of the delicious cookies under her bed and refused to share.

Horde: A group of people. Or, from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: "A teeming crowd or throng."

You can not horde the candy canes and your hoard can not storm the bar for grog. Yet! Dragons hoard shiny things and hordes of foolish knights and drunk peasants attempt to reclaim the valuable artifacts.

...Sorry. These words just remind me of my nerdier days. Days where my interests were all fantasy-based. I think I'll slink off to a corner with my fantasy novels now, with promises to return when you misuse hoard and horde so that I might point and laugh. Ahem. Yes. See you Tuesday!

Additional Resources:
Hoard, The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Horde, The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

1 comment:

Hillary said...

Wait, we're former co-workers? When did that happen? I am so out of the loop.

Setting my surpise aside, thank you for hoard vs. horde! I love scifi and fantasy, so I found your dragons and knights example to be just right :)