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” ...

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 ...

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 ...

“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 ...

Word of the day: Alacrity - Studies show strong vocabulary improves professional success by nearly 30%. “Alacrity” is one such powerful word. It means quick action with real enthusiasm. Not just speed ...

People occasionally complain to me that so many today seem to lean on profanity rather than utilizing the other lexical resources at their disposal. “Why do they have to keep using that word over and ...

Word of the day: Onomatopoeia means a word that imitates real sound. Words like buzz, crash, boom, and whisper copy natural ...

With analysts and vendors using "technical debt" and other phrases to mean whatever they want them to mean, someone has to defend the language. IT loves buzzwords. But it is now becoming frightfully ...