Use 'semantic gradients' to turn vocabulary study into a shared thinking activity that explores the subtle differences ...

Even if you’re not a full-blown grammar nerd, you’ll find the origins of these words that changed meaning over time completely fascinating The English language is alive—and like any living thing, it ...

In the brain, language pops up everywhere. All across the wrinkly expanse of the brain’s outer layer, a constellation of different regions handle the meaning of language, scientists report online ...

Speaking from his home in Washington, D.C., Fatsis reflects on the thousands of words that were added to the lexicon in 2025, ...

Thanks to the evolution of language, technology, and lots of hyperbole, these words used to convey a lot more merit, emotion, or simply seriousness than they do nowadays. Ah, “genius.” Once reserved ...

It's like Google Maps for your cerebral cortex: A new interactive atlas, developed with the help of such unlikely tools as public radio podcasts and Wikipedia, purports to show which bits of your ...

The human mind is astonishing. We can think through the toughest problems and find the smartest solutions. We can compute answers to the toughest mathematical questions. And we can apply our creative ...

Linguist John McWhorter explores how the meaning of words change dramatically over time, and why we should embrace this. The suffix "ism" is photographed in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, in ...

Some time ago, I fell into conversation with a colleague about what we had been reading lately, and the person suggested that I absolutely must give Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” a try. The pandemic ...