Avast! Ahoy! Bring it on, mateys! Did you know that September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Arrrr, it's true! Lately, it seems that everyone is trying to sound piratical.  Continue reading...

Some punctuation marks hog the spotlight, like the versatile, omnipresent comma and the flirty, oft-abused semicolon. Question marks and exclamation marks — the good cop, bad cop of punctuation — are forever in your face. The period subtly but emphatically makes its presence known, while parentheses are off gossiping and tittering like teenage girls. These are the usual suspects most people think of when it comes to punctuation.  Continue reading...

Jan Schreiber, a noted poet, critic, and translator, encourages aspiring writers to make their own metaphors: "The ability to shift, smoothly and almost unnoticed, between two related meanings of a word is one of the remarkable features of human communication."  Continue reading...

For language lovers, Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast has been required listening for the past year and a half. Now Lexicon Valley has announced that in addition to the podcast, it is also launching a language blog on Slate. The blog cross-publishes posts from contributors to Language Log, including our own Ben Zimmer.  Continue reading...

KUOW, Seattle's NPR affiliate, kicked off a new midday show this week called The Record. The show is featuring a regular series on the origins of peculiar words and phrases called "Strange Language," and they're getting the straight dope from our own Ben Zimmer.  Continue reading...

Premium is a versatile word that occupies a unique semantic space in English, with nodes corresponding to ideas of scarcity, superior quality, preference, payment, and reward. The ways in which the usage of premium has changed in the last century or so have given premium a kind of circuit-training workout, allowing it to exercise its meanings vigorously at each of these nodes at different times.  Continue reading...