A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
What’s the difference between a daffodil and a jonquil? Strictly speaking, daffodil is a general term, and jonquils are a specific type of daffodil, called Narcissus jonquilla. Both belong to the botanical genus Narcissus, and most people use...
“What has a head like a cat, feet like a cat, a tail like a cat, but isn’t a cat?” Answer: a kitten! A 1948 children’s joke book has lots of these to share with kids. Plus: an easy explanation for the difference between...
The autocomplete function on your phone comes in handy, of course. But is it changing the way we write and how linguists study language? Also, suppose you could invite any two authors, living or dead, to dinner. Who’s on your guest list and...
How long do you have to remain in a place before you can truthfully say you lived there, as opposed to just visiting it? What’s the difference between to live somewhere and to stay somewhere? This philosophical question is complicated by the...