In a speech on Tuesday anticipating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that it was time to retire the name "Ground Zero" when referring to the World Trade Center site. "We will never forget the devastation of the area that came to be known as 'Ground Zero,'" Bloomberg said. "But the time has come to call those 16 acres what they are: The World Trade Center and the National September 11th Memorial and Museum." That's quite a mouthful.  Continue reading...

Yesterday, the east coast of the United States was struck by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake — or, as it was frequently described in news accounts, a "temblor." Fortunately, the damage caused by the quake was limited, so instead we can contemplate the question: what the heck is a temblor? Or should the word be tremblor?  Continue reading...

When I go on radio shows to talk about English language usage, talk inevitably turns to words and phrases that people find annoying. (The topic is sure to light up the call-in lines.) Among the top peeves I hear about are three expressions that get used in an inverted fashion: literally used non-literally to emphasize a figure of speech, irregardless used to mean regardless, and could care less used to mean couldn't care less. What's with all the flip-flopping?  Continue reading...

All this week, politicians and pundits have been busy reacting to Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. debt rating from AAA to AA+, the first such credit downgrade in American history. The word downgrade itself has taken on powerful significance, to the point that it has vaulted into contention for Word of the Year.  Continue reading...

Every technological advance brings with it new vocabulary, very often by taking old words and supplying new meanings. The age of social media has given us friending and unfriending, following and unfollowing, and so forth. Now Google's foray into social networking, Google+, has introduced its own lingo: circles and hangouts, sparks and huddles. But with such a new system (Google+ is still in limited field trial), there's naturally some initial confusion over basic terminology.  Continue reading...

In the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, I took a look at how forensic linguists try to determine the author of an e-mail by picking up on subtle clues of style and grammar. This is very much in the news, thanks to a lawsuit filed against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by one Paul Ceglia, who claims that Zuckerberg promised him half of Facebook's holdings, as proven by e-mail exchanges he says they had. Did Zuckerberg actually write the e-mails? Call the language detectives.  Continue reading...

With the final Harry Potter movie opening this weekend, many are reflecting on the last legacy of J.K. Rowling's oeuvre. In print and on screen, the Harry Potter franchise has been incredibly successful, and it's only natural that such a mass phenomenon would leave its imprint on popular culture, including the popular lexicon. Rowling's inventive use of language has been a key to conjuring the fantasy world of the Potterverse, and that language has seeped into real-world usage as well.  Continue reading...