Richard Bailey's Speaking American is one of those books I wish I could make every prescriptivist grouch in the world read. You know the type: the kind of misinformed peever who kvetches about "kids these days" and the language going to hell while yearning to preserve English, as if it were a precious vase a teenage texter might knock over while planking, shattering it forever and leaving us all mute.  Continue reading...

One aspect of the computing world that we're all deeply involved in (whether we realize it or not) is the specialized field of databases. In this article, I thought it might be fun to look at the terminology of that involvement from the database's point of view.  Continue reading...

Before pushing on with this month's batch of old and new euphemisms, I'd feel remiss if I didn't give my take on job creator, which the American Dialect Society voted 2011's Most Euphemistic term of the year.  Continue reading...

Merrill Perlman looks at the way that the "drink/drank/drunk" verb paradigm is changing, and advises you how to derive "drunk" (but please, don't drive drunk).  Continue reading...

Bill Walsh, a multiplatform editor at The Washington Post and longtime usage maven, poses a mathematical question:

If I start with $100 and end up with $250, did that money grow 2 1/2 times?  Continue reading...

Sadly, I won't be in Portland for the American Dialect Society's meeting, that annual gathering of learned lexicographers and amateur wordinistas. This is an outrage. What foul conspiracy of left-wing moonbats, right-wing wingnuts, and middle-wing batnuts conspired to keep me away?  Continue reading...