In 2000, the American Dialect Society picked the Word of the Millennium: she, which entered English in the 12th century. But where did the word come from, exactly? Visual Thesaurus contributor Stan Carey writes on his Sentence First blog that its origins remain shrouded in mystery. Read all about it here.

Last week, in honor of National Grammar Day, editor Mark Allen hosted a contest for grammar-related haiku. The winner was submitted by Gord Roberts: "Spell-checkers won't catch / You're mistaken homophones / Scattered hear and their." Read all the submissions on Mark's blog here, here, and here.

"Well formed haiku bring / National Grammar Day glory / tweet your best today." In advance of National Grammar Day on March 4th, editor Mark Allen is hosting a haiku-writing contest. Submit your grammar-related haiku by posting it to Twitter with the hashtag #GrammarDay. Deadline is 10 p.m. on March 3rd! Details here.

In his new blog Shady Characters, Keith Houston seeks to tell "the unusual stories behind some well-known — and some rather more outlandish — marks of punctuation." Get started with the first of Houston's "typographic raconteurs," the pilcrow.

Last week, a study was published tracking word frequencies on the blogosphere, and researchers found that certain words can have earthquake-like effects. The researchers, from the Medical University of Vienna, examined 168 political blogs in the United States and monitored spikes in word frequency. They discovered that some events can trigger influential "reverberations."  Continue reading...

Today is the 11th annual commemoration of International Mother Language Day. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) asks the world community to celebrate linguistic diversity and the promotion of mother tongues. Read more from the United Nations here, and check out the LingEducator blog for ideas about classroom activities.

IBM's Watson super-computer is taking on two humans, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, on the game show "Jeopardy!" An earlier sparring partner, Greg Lindsay, discovered that ambiguous language was Watson's Achilles heel. Read about Lindsay's experience here. (And follow Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer's live-tweeting of the tournament on the VT Twitter feed.)