“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — William Shakespeare Words make a difference. They have meaning. Recently the debate began in Maryland on ...

Thanks to the evolution of language, technology, and lots of hyperbole, these words used to convey a lot more merit, emotion, or simply seriousness than they do nowadays. Ah, “genius.” Once reserved ...

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How do words get their meanings? Why does the string of letters (and sounds) "d-o-g" mean "dog" and "c-a-t" mean "cat"? For the most part, meanings are conventions: A group of people (like speakers of ...

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them. Words sometimes have two meanings, as Led Zeppelin sang ...

Dictionary.com has crowned a set of numbers as its 2025 word of the year. It says it reserves that distinction for a word that reflects "social trends and global events that defined that year" and ...

For the 17th year, Wayne State University's "Word Warriors" shared 10 underused words they are trying to bring back into daily use in 2026.

Children learn language effortlessly and completely voluntarily. They learn new words miraculously fast. A teenager masters about 60,000 words of their mother tongue by the time they finish high ...

Think twice before you use words like “lackaday” or “nonplussed”—they may mean something quite different than what you’d assume. We’re all familiar with the onomatopoeia—a word that phonetically ...

There are some words we may permit to lose their significance and implications, but only to our great loss. In a day of cynicism, disillusionment and existential jargon we do well to remember that ...