The word "deadline" has been used a lot in reference to tariffs. It got us thinking: what is the origin of the word? NPR's Scott Simon talks with Benjamin Dreyer, author of "Dreyer's English." The ...

Linguist Gareth Roberts joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the etymologies of English words. How did the first languages first form? Was there once a single common language ...

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 ...

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, 54 percent of adults, nearly 130 million people, aged 16 to 74 lack literacy proficiency, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

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 ...

“What really intrigued me at first was the word itself,” explained Anderson, director of the narrative feature film “The Big Empty” two years ago. Chatting with indieWIRE Thursday in the lobby of the ...

This story originally appeared on Mental Floss. Every two years we get to marvel at them — no, not the superhuman feats of strength and skill from the greatest athletes in the world, but the weird and ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. GRAHAM, N.C. (WGHP) — The ...

Jess Zafarris began her journey into word nerdery in college, where her English literature coursework introduced her to the Old English of “Beowulf” and Chaucer’s Middle English. While pursuing her ...

Compared with other widely spoken languages, English has few guardrails against the will of the masses. We have no governing body equivalent to the Real Academia Española, much less the notoriously ...