LANGUAGE

In the wake of People magazine’s announcement of its choice for this year’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” our thoughts, naturally, turn to the unusual syntax of this phrase.

'Smith' is an Old English name that was given to those who worked with metal. It's probably related to a word that meant "to strike." Where does your last name come from?

Take a look at how different languages are connected to one another with this wonderful illustration by Minna Sundberg.

From bears and storks to singing wolves and castrated sheep, all 16 of the words listed here have surprising zoological origins.

For over a century, a controversy has been brewing over what might be called the Loch Ness Monster of dialect study: the elusive singular “y’all.” There are a few who claim to have seen it in the wild, and many who denounce such claims as nonsense. Does i

Here are a handful of Aesop’s most popular contributions which we still use today, along with a taste of the stories that spawned them.

Most of our abbreviations for units of measurements are pretty straightforward. They are made up of of letters from the words they stand for. So how do we get lb for “pound” and oz for “ounce”?