LANGUAGE

Is it coleslaw or cold slaw? Deep-seated or deep-seeded? There are right answers, but the wrong ones seem kind of right, too.

Sometimes words move up in the world. Their meanings change with time, becoming more positive—a process linguists call amelioration.

The ‘laying vs. lying’ situation is tricky—but direct objects can help.

Though they’re sometimes used interchangeably, grilling and barbecuing describe distinct methods of outdoor cooking.

Atlanta’s culture doesn’t just resonate to the suburbs—it hits every corner of the country. But there’s always a chance you could get caught off guard while visiting, so here’s a handy sampler of terms to know if you decide to hold it down in A-Town.

There’s a reason nobody’s referring to the missing ‘Titanic’ submersible as a submarine.

If you’ve been pronouncing Roald Dahl’s first name as “rolled,” you should read this.

A pronoun slip can be embarrassing, especially if you pride yourself on being generally good at using the language people have asked you to use. Why do pronoun slips happen, and why do we seem to mess up pronouns more than names or other gendered words?

Sure, all books are filled with words—but not quite like this.

Linguistic illusions—a phenomenon in which your judgment or understanding of a sentence or phrase conflicts with its actual meaning or structure—reveal how we process the world, and remind us that things aren’t always as they seem.

The Roy family of 'Succession' is pretty foul-mouthed, but are they the filthiest TV characters?

The years-in-the-making Oxford Dictionary of African American English will offer proper attribution to words and phrases that originated in Black culture.