★ Free Smile or Frown
Every word keeps company. Its Smiles mean the same thing, its Frowns mean the opposite, and learning a word means learning the words it travels with.
A word's Smiles mean the same and its Frowns mean the opposite, and Slang and the Mayor are living proof of both: they say the same thing two ways, and they sit at opposite ends of the same town.
The full Word Hoard cycle is coming.
A very large amount of something.
In a sentenceAfter the harvest, the barn held an abundance of apples.
Smile or Frown?
Smile or Frown
Is this pair a Smile (same meaning) or a Frown (opposite meaning)?
Play it in the Arcade.
Take it onto the floor with the live game. Free, and it plays daily.
Two words a turn. Same meaning is a Smile, opposite is a Frown. A daily synonym and antonym game with Slang and the Mayor.
Play Smile or Frown →A word in the family is not always a friend.
Scarcity shows up right next to abundance in a word list, so it is tempting to call them the same. They are opposites. Abundance is a lot; scarcity is barely any. That is a Frown, not a Smile.
Plenty means the same as abundance. That is the Smile. The test is direction: a Smile points the same way, a Frown points the opposite way.
A real vocabulary skill, Grades 1 through 8.
Smile or Frown is one of the seven ways Grammaropolis teaches vocabulary, each mapped to a Common Core vocabulary strand. The Wonderful Words workbooks are standards-cited today across Common Core, Texas TEKS, Florida B.E.S.T., and New York Next Gen, and the per-grade digital alignment arrives with the cycle.
Teachers know these as word-learning strategies.
CCSS L.x.5 (word relationships and nuances, including synonyms and antonyms).
See it in the Standards Explorer →Other ways to know a word.
Back to Wonderful Words → Try the Sentence Factory → Wonderful Words workbook →