Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first …
The great diversity of ethnicities and languages in Africa encourages a vision of Africa as a fragmented continent, with language maps only perpetuating this vision by drawing …
From the 494 B.C. plebeians' march out of Rome to gain improved status, to Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns in India, to the liberation of Poland and the Baltic nations, and the …
Keywords for Today takes us deep into the history of the language in order to better understand our contemporary world. From nature to cultural appropriation and from market to …
The technological realm provides an unusually active laboratory not only for new ideas and products but also for the remarkable linguistic innovations that accompany and describe …
In 1664, French Jesuit Louis Nicolas arrived in Quebec. Upon first hearing Ojibwe, Nicolas observed that he had encountered the most barbaric language in the world--but after …
When did English become American? What distinctive qualities made it American? What role have America's democratizing impulses, and its vibrantly heterogeneous speakers, played in …
It is said to be the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet, more common than an infant's first word ma or the ever-present beverage Coke. It was even the first word …
Careful writers and speakers agree that clich?s are generally to be avoided. However, nearly all of us continue to use them. Why do they persist in our language?In It's Been Said …
Had you said "e;What a guy!"e; in 17th-century England, anyone would have understood you were admiring a flaming effigy of Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder Treason Plot. How …
