LANGUAGE

The word predates social media.

We’ve used the term ‘rat’ to refer to an informer since approximately 1910. But criminals have had many more names for snitches over the years.

“Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox, and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny?” analyzed an existing list of 4997 funny words and recruited 800 survey participants to whittle down the collection to the 200 words the people found funniest.

Chicago may have been named after an Indigenous term for stinky onions.

Take a look at these 13 names from across the world that describe sleep paralysis and the demon once believed to cause it.

Whether you call it Mischief Night, Devil's Night, or something else, it all means one thing: wanton destruction of property.

The origin of ‘towhead’ has roots in 14th-century England, when ‘tow’ often referred to textile fibers.

Calling a grandparent 'Grandmother' or 'Grandfather' is so played out.

The pronunciations of names like ‘Yves’ and ‘Geneviève’ aren’t hard once you’ve heard them a few times.

Ghosts, ghouls, and monsters turn up everywhere at Halloween—including in our language, and sometimes where you least expect.

When talking about the fundament, some terms have slipped through the crack of lexical history—so please enjoy these old and enjoyable terms for the hindquarters.

It took more than 70 years and tons of volunteer labor to create “the definitive record of the English language”—including an assist from a murderer. Get to know the Oxford English Dictionary better.