LANGUAGE

Some stumps were involved in the making of the stump speech.

The expression—which can be used for all things adorable—dates back to the early 20th century.

The connections between words aren’t always as straightforward as the link between ‘run’ and ‘runner’; often, figuring them out requires the subtle unraveling of linguistic evolution, the kind of detective work that makes etymology so fascinating.

People often confuse funnel clouds with tornadoes, but they're not the same. Learn how to tell the two apart.

Because sometimes, periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses won't do.

Not everyone gives directions the way you do—in fact, the way people tell others how to get where they want to go can vary by city, town, and culture. Some of these directional systems might just change how you navigate the world.

Suggestions for what to call the period of time from 2000–2009 ranged from ‘the nillies’ and ‘the oh-ohs’ to ‘the double zeroes’ and ‘the noughties.’ So how’d we land on ‘the aughts’?

Next time you’re in the Hub, you can let your Masshole flag fly with these Boston slang terms that will have you sounding like a townie in no time.

Roosevelt launched one of his most famous sayings at the Minnesota State Fair in September 1901—just two weeks before he became president.

Code-switching goes beyond language—here's what it means and why it happens.

It’s succinct enough to fit on a bumper sticker. But what did ‘knowledge is power’ originally mean?

Did 17th-century immigrants to the 13 colonies have modern British accents? First, we need to figure out what a “British accent” is.