LANGUAGE

The most exciting thing about Denis Villeneuve’s new sci-fi space-encounter movie isn’t the aliens or the spaceships or the worldwide panic they bring on. It’s the fact that the hero is a linguistics professor!

In the United States, the @ symbol is called an “at.” But not everybody else uses that name—in fact, some of the international options are downright cute.

Composers have long pushed the boundaries of classical music by writing parts for new and innovative instruments—but not all of them have ended up a permanent fixture in the orchestra …

There's more to these workhouse members of our linguistics inventory than you might think.

He'd had enuf of the old way. Known for his uncompromising stance on many issues, in the early 1900s Roosevelt used the full power of his position to try to force through several hundred new spelling reforms.

It's human nature to conceive of abstract ideas through more immediate, concrete experiences—which is to say, through metaphors. Most of the words we have for abstract concepts began this way.

Pull apart the word "trivia," and you’ll be left with two fairly familiar Latin roots.

English has a number of prefixes that come from the concept of “half.” Why do we have so many? And what’s the difference between them?

A new book by cognitive psychologist Benjamin K. Bergen delves into the profane side of language to reveal a host of interesting and entertaining things you might not realize about our relationship with naughty words.

Let me put this right up front. The headline to this post is slightly misleading, but not dishonest.

By some accounts, the average person owns 19 pairs of shoes. But it’s not just our closets that are overflowing with sneakers, loafers, pumps, and wedges. It’s also our vocabulary.