Words

Vikings had some really descriptive epithets.

Knowing how to speak two languages is not the same thing as knowing how to translate. Don't believe us? Here are nine times a little translation mistake turned into a big problem.

Much has been made of the hidden significance behind the film’s most famous line, but how about the names? From birds to gluttons to just what the heck “silence of the lambs” means, here's a look at the significance of six names from the film.

Two thousands years is a long time. Even words that originated in ancient Greek can evolve considerably, even if their English counterparts retained the original definition.

The British have many delightful and colorful expressions that often make no sense to the rest of the world.

The fleshy, edible, seed-bearing parts of plants are a fruitful source of terms and phrases. We’ve picked eleven for you.

Humans have long been obsessed with the idea of man-like machines they could dominate—or be dominated by. But the word 'robot' is just 90 years old, and the blockbuster play that introduced the word has long since been forgotten.

Daráit!

These English words have been so thoroughly Japan-ized, they're barely recognizable.

In science fiction, fantasy, and superhero stories, people frequently do the impossible—fly at light speed, travel through time, be Superman, etc. The creators of such stories sometimes try to do something even more impossible by scientifically explaining

Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find the perfect word (or 'le mot juste') for a particular situation. Here are a bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.

Embiggen was an obscure old word before The Simpsons brought it back.

After hundreds of episodes—and with no end in sight—'The Simpsons' has changed the way we talk to one another.

The film, which was released 25 years ago this month, is rife with criminal cant, some of which might be older than you think.

Want to make conversations more fun? Consider the former meanings of these words.

These common names sound like they're straight out of a Harry Potter potions list.

All words had to start somewhere—but sometimes, after much searching and analyzing, no satisfying origin explanation can be found.

Few franchises have had the cultural impact of the various 'Star Trek' television series and movies, and nowhere is that more evident than in the snippets of dialogue that have become a part of the American vernacular.