There is no question that my love of language is an inherited trait. My father was a lay linguist, in addition to being a teacher, writer, and public intellectual. In the last few years of his life, ...

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” observed philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1922. We might ask, accordingly, how does language shape reality, arbitrating human experience of ...

Below are 12 Shakespearean words that quietly changed their meaning over the last few centuries. In Shakespeare’s time, ...

Scientists say they have made an atlas of where words' meanings are located in the brain. The map shows that words are represented in different regions throughout the brain's outer layer. To make the ...

Some holiday words have more than one meaning, like "trim" the tree. And some meanings have more than one word, like "gift" ...

“Stop gaslighting me,” I joked to my brother. He rolled his eyes, “That’s not what the word ‘gaslighting’ means.” “Stop gaslighting me about gaslighting!” I yelled back. Merriam-Webster has just ...