It’s a very satisfying thing to learn that there’s a word for an experience you didn’t know could be described by a word. Learning that, for example, clinomania is an “excessive desire to stay in bed” ...

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 ...

How do words get their meanings? Why does the string of letters (and sounds) "d-o-g" mean "dog" and "c-a-t" mean "cat"? For the most part, meanings are conventions: A group of people (like speakers of ...

Word meanings can shift radically, just like pronunciation. Called semantic change, a shift in a word's meaning occurs when frequent misuse becomes standard, or when metaphoric use becomes literal.

Children learn language effortlessly and completely voluntarily. They learn new words miraculously fast. A teenager masters about 60,000 words of their mother tongue by the time they finish high ...

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — William Shakespeare Words make a difference. They have meaning. Recently the debate began in Maryland on ...

Appurtenance is a formal word for something that belongs to a larger item. Think of garages with houses or chargers for phones. These are appurtenances. The term comes from old French and Latin. It is ...