Kerry U. asks: When words fall out of usage are they removed from the dictionary? The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is generally regarded as the single most comprehensive record of the English language to exist. Included in this work are many thousands of words considered completely “obsolete” by lexicographers. You see, in something of a Hotel California [...]

6 August 2025 We normally think of a satellite as an object in outer space that is in orbit around another, larger object, such as a moon around a planet. But that is not its only meaning in present-day English, nor is it the original sense of the word. Satellite is borrowed from both the Fren

From "yeet" to "social distancing," new words and phrases constantly emerge and evolve in American English. But how do these neologisms—newly coined terms—gain acceptance and become part of mainstream dialect?

Compiled while sitting through a three-hour public hearing and rethinking life choices. - - -Are you a citizen trying to understand urban planning?...

Titivillus is a medieval demon who inspired the phrase "the devil is in the details," and has been blamed for writing mistakes and typos.

More than a century after colonisation, the Ainu language almost vanished. Now machines are listening to hours of old recordings and learning to give it a new voice.

Naomi Cohn, Darien Gee, and Tom McAllister discuss methods that have helped them overcome writer’s block

“My Phone Is the Supermoon,” flash fiction by Nathan Alling Long

These books do their very best to break the rules of storytelling

The trend explores how racism and the model minority myth flatten Asians and Asian Americans

Being bilingual is a wonderful thing. Studies show that it has numerous advantages. Everything from increasing certain cognitive functions to giving you a leg up in the professional world. Not to mention it gave us the fantastic Spanglish!   Although we’re a bit behind on learning languages in places like the U.S. and the U.K., the number of biling...

“Blue” from THE FATE OF OTHERS by Richard Bausch, recommended by Jennifer Haigh

These poets show that sometimes the best verse takes time to unfold

Step aside, post-apocalypse. These books ring the alarm bells for an apocalypse yet to come

These authors don't shy away from the messy and brutal parts of the business

What happens when ambition and talent go awry?

In the midst of brutal times, these books remind us that the opposite of force isn’t weakness, but beauty

If your book is on this list, watch out for these common pitfalls

Through poetry, prose, and myth, these authors attend to the lacunae in humanity’s past

For these experimental authors, flesh is just another boundary to break

To understand a society, consider how it records its knowledge

New linguistic findings show that the European Huns had Paleo-Siberian ancestors and do not, as previously assumed, originate from Turkic-speaking groups. The joint study was conducted by Dr. Svenja Bonmann at the University of Cologne's Department of Linguistics and Dr. Simon Fries at the Faculty of Classics and the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford.

A late discovery and an excuse to preview Martha Barnette's new book about language.

“Oh, just some words that my family always says when we enter a church.”

In a previous post, I outlined some of the various types of services that various translation buyers might be looking for, including transcreation. Earlier this week, I shared an article about tran…