The most memorable line in Wednesday night's presidential debate, at least if social media is any indication, came when Mitt Romney vowed to cut funding to PBS but added, "I like PBS. I love Big Bird." President Obama had a good comeback for the Big Bird line... except he delivered it a day later.  Continue reading...

Today marks the first anniversary of the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Shortly after his passing last year, Ben Zimmer mused on "Jobs's unique and spirited way with words," from "think different" to "stay hungry." Read his Word Routes column, "'And One More Thing': The Insanely Great Language of Steve Jobs," here.

The Oxford English Dictionary has long relied on "the wisdom of the crowds" to build a comprehensive historical record of English words and phrases back to their origins. The dictionary's latest experiment in crowdsourcing is "OED Appeals," an online initiative to engage the public in finding "antedatings," or citations that predate the earliest known examples in the OED files.  Continue reading...

As a euphemism columnist, I admire the work of anyone who catches dodges, evasions, and Orwellian whoppers in their butterfly nets. So I was thrilled, during the Republican National Convention, to find The Week's list of ways the media didn't say veep candidate Paul Ryan was a liar.  Continue reading...

As teachers begin to grapple with the demands of the Common Core State Standards, they may be overlooking a discrete language standard living in the shadows of those major shifts.  Continue reading...

Hi! Hey! Ho! Yo! Ahem. Good day, ladies and gentlemen, umm, I'd like to address you today about the silly little words that we, umm, use without knowing if they're words or not: words like hey, hi, ho, yo, ahem, and umm. Here's hoping you don't find the topic ho-hum. (Oy, is anyone out there listening?)  Continue reading...

The presidential debates begin this week, and this week’s worksheet gets students to evaluate the language and words that shape the focus for each presidential and vice presidential candidate.  Continue reading...