At the end of each year, while linguists and lexicographers cast votes for words of the year, I'm compiling a different list: the brand names that distilled the mood of the previous twelve months. To narrow the field, I add another criterion: the brand names must be linguistically notable.  Continue reading...

I'd give a kidney if there were no more euphemisms, but then I'd be out of a job, so let me rethink that. In the meantime, here are some euphemisms — all harvested fresh and ready to transplant into your interoffice memos and supersized tweets.  Continue reading...

Apparently, one of the things that is making our Facebook feeds appetizing is a sauce—a combination of metrics mixed in exactly the right proportions to make this particular meal ever appealing.  Continue reading...

Here we are in Branding Land, circa 2017, where disparaging modifiers are paired with positive words and attached to messages intended to persuade and sell.  Continue reading...

With the Halloween season now safely behind us for another year, I can bring to light a feature of it that has haunted me in recent weeks.  Continue reading...

Don't want to be known as a climate change denier? Call yourself a climate change agnostic. I can't deny that there's a metric tuchus-load of euphemisms out there, because the evidence is enough to overwhelm a drivel agnostic.  Continue reading...