We'd like to welcome Merrill Perlman, who writes the "Language Corner" column for Columbia Journalism Review, as our newest regular contributor! In this column, she's grabbing at "straws": straw polls, straw men, and straw bashers.  Continue reading...

Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, is constantly on the lookout for new quotations that might make the cut for the next edition of his authoritative quotation dictionary. Below, find out what he thinks are the top ten quotations of 2011.  Continue reading...

University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron is a regular Visual Thesaurus contributor, and we're proud to feature selected pieces he has written for his site, The Web of Language. Here, Dennis looks back on some of the top language stories that crossed his radar in 2011.  Continue reading...

Visiting Australia earlier this week, President Obama broke the ice by injecting some Australian slang into his public speeches. He used a selection of Aussie-isms like chinwag and ear-bashing for comic effect, but it's probably a good thing that he didn't go overboard by trying to mimic a broad Australian English accent (often called "Strine"). British Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, wasn't so lucky: he got into some hot water for an ill-advised attempt at Strine.  Continue reading...

The public protest over economic inequalities known as "Occupy Wall Street" has been going on nearly a month now, with the original demonstration in Manhattan's Financial District spreading to cities around the world. Thanks to the success of the movement, the lingo of the protesters has spread quickly, with the verb occupy in particular becoming a kind of rallying cry.  Continue reading...

All this week, politicians and pundits have been busy reacting to Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. debt rating from AAA to AA+, the first such credit downgrade in American history. The word downgrade itself has taken on powerful significance, to the point that it has vaulted into contention for Word of the Year.  Continue reading...