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...

Martin Luther is a fascinating study for any lover of language because his entire conflict with and banishment from Catholicism were conducted through speech and writing.  Continue reading...

London's colossal clog is a reminder of the history of berg and its parent word iceberg. With language, there's always a lot going on beneath the surface.  Continue reading...

Are you scared of group warfare? You should be, because group is now a euphemism for gang. Anyhoo, here's your monthly meal of weak words I caught in my lexical lobster trap. All these words are safe for home use: they have no sharp edges or blunt meanings whatsoever.  Continue reading...

From a linguistic perspective, the now burgeoning field of genetic genealogy provides an interesting case study for the ways in which we develop new terminology for new concepts, picking and choosing among the raw materials we have (that is, words) to designate things for which we didn't have or need particular names before.  Continue reading...