On his blog The Web of Language, Dennis Baron, a professor of English at the University of Illinois and a regular contributor to the Visual Thesaurus, runs down the top ten language-related stories of the past year, covering everything from a dictionary ban to a temple to the goddess English. Read the full list here.

"Let there be light." "A fly in the ointment." "New wine in old bottles." "My brother's keeper." All of these familiar expressions entered English through the King James version of the Bible, which is about to turn 400 years old. In his new book Begat, David Crystal traces how, more than any other literary source in history, the King James Bible contributed to the stock of English idioms and proverbs.  Continue reading...

Have you noticed that curators, once restricted to institutions like museums and art galleries, are now running rampant? Research librarian Stan Friedman investigates curator-mania, and discovers that people are finding comfort in an old, trusted term.  Continue reading...

“Stop and think!” was a phrase deployed numerous times an hour by a former co-teacher, when we worked together in a preschool classroom. Whether it was a girl about to try to eat some sand from the sand table, or a boy seconds away from hurling himself off of the top of a slide, “Stop and think!” would ring out.  Continue reading...

How do you feel about the phrase due to? Does it just mean "attributable to" to you, or can it also mean "because of"? Your answer may help explain where you fall along the prescriptivism-descriptivism usage continuum.  Continue reading...

My mother and sister seem to take more pleasure than the average bear in saying things like, "It was he" and "This is she."

Actually, the average bear takes NO pleasure in saying such things because the average bear doesn't say them; the average bear says, "It was him" and "You got 'er."  Continue reading...