Do you prefer artisan malarkey, artisan-style poppycock, or artisanal mumbo-jumbo?

All three are readily available these days, as it seems every grocery-store aisle, bakery, coffee shop, and restaurant is selling artisan cheese, artisan sandwiches, or the bizarrely labeled artisan-style bread. Even Dunkin' Donuts is, preposterously, selling artisan bagels.  Continue reading...

An extension of a federal highway program passed the House recently, over the objections of some Democrats. "Even as they were approving the measure in an anti-climatic voice vote, Democrats sharply criticized Republicans for not accepting a two-year, $109 billion version of the transportation measure the Senate had approved on a bipartisan vote earlier this month," one news report said.  Continue reading...

When we argue about the "authenticity" of a linguistic representation, be it a holy text or the screenplay of a period drama like Mad Men or Downton Abbey, what are we really arguing about? In this month's Language Lounge, we delve into the knotty question of how "fungible" words and meanings can be.  Continue reading...

Word Routes, the regular column by Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer, was selected as one of the top 100 Language Lovers of 2012, and one of the top 20 Language Professional blogs, in a worldwide competition hosted by bab.la and Lexiophiles. Language blogs and sites were nominated and then ranked according to user votes and other criteria. Check out the whole list here.

In the 85th Scripps National Spelling Bee, the words were as diabolical as ever, but Snigdha Nandipati of San Diego, California took it all in stride. When it came time to spell the final word, guetapens, a French-derived word for "an ambush, snare, or trap," she wasn't snared by its strangeness and calmly spelled it correctly.  Continue reading...