Do you find 21st-century life shallow and superficial? Take another look: In fact, ours is an era of extraordinary depth — linguistically speaking, anyway. As the 2011 song by Adele put it, we're rolling in the deep.  Continue reading...

This fast-growing transportation trend has added some new terms to our vocabulary, and revived some older ones.  Continue reading...

The ubiquitous, and relatively recent, commercial sense of nation veers away from the word's earlier meanings. And it intersects in interesting ways with a related word that's also in the spotlight right now: nationalism.  Continue reading...

influencer – the word, not the status – is one of the most influential buzzwords of our era.  Continue reading...

What will you remember about 2018? Among everything else, I'll remember some brand names that made headlines or just piqued my professional curiosity. Here are my top ten.  Continue reading...

In the American West, wildfires have become both more frequent and more destructive. With this ominous shift has come a new vocabulary for describing fire and its outcome – and new attention to some of the oldest words in our language.  Continue reading...

Out of professional curiosity, I asked first-time author and former Google exec Jessica Powell about how she created the character, company, and place names in her novel The Big Disruption.  Continue reading...