“Every word was coined by a resourceful individual or borrowed as a result of language contact in a certain place at a certain time,” writes Anatoly Liberman in his new book, “Word Origins and How We ...

They're known as man's best friends, fur babies, pooches. But the most widely used word for these beloved animals — "dog" — is also a great linguistic mystery. "The most everyday, commonplace words ...

A new book exploring the origins of common food terms — from bialy to lima bean to bibimbap — is a fascinating history of how we eat and cook. By Kim Severson Used judiciously, the snappy tidbits of ...

On a recent appearance on the Graham Norton show, the notoriously potty-mouthed British and Australian actress Miriam Margolyes talked of a list of banned phrases she was handed prior to going on a ...

Keyes is the author of seventeen books, including The Post-Truth Era, cited by Oxford Dictionaries as a primary source for their 2016 "Word of the Year." His latest book, The Hidden History of Coined ...

To a recent roundup of whale shark news, I appended a sort of human interest one-liner about how “shark” is the only word in the English language that derives from a Yucatec (Mayan) Indian word – “Xoc ...