The woman suffrage movement introduced Americans to a new vocabulary of voting rights. Here's a centennial look back at our linguistic debt to the 19th Amendment and its advocates.  Continue reading...

If you've visited the world of online dating you may have noticed the disparities between the ways males and females present themselves, and the disparities between the ways that they seem to want to appear to each other.  Continue reading...

Linguistically, it seems, the second decade of the 21st century was all about our selves. At its annual meeting the American Dialect Society selected (my) pronouns as its word of the year for 2019 and singular or nonbinary they as the word of the decade.  Continue reading...

Rejoice! There's a new candidate for Euphemism of the Year, Drivel of the Decade, and Malarkey of the Millennium.  Continue reading...

John Donne's poem The Undertaking, published in the early 17th century, suggests that forgetting the he and she would be "a braver thing than all the Worthies did." In a way, that is the same problem that's currently being considered in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.  Continue reading...

It's time to dive headfirst into that confoundingest of subjects: the formation of comparatives and superlatives.  Continue reading...