You don't need much imagination to guess why people who work in the dictionary world would be interested in new words, but the research methods for finding them are much more wide-ranging and intensive than you might imagine.  Continue reading...

How important is a slogan during a global health crisis like the one we're experiencing with COVID-19? More important than you might think.  Continue reading...

The stay-at-home orders of recent months have meant a lot more time to deep-dive into etymologies, and this has led me to reflect on a thing I hadn't noticed as much before: English has a surfeit of expressions for the idea 1 + 1.  Continue reading...

A case recently argued before the US Supreme Court — by telephone! — teaches us a lot about trademarks, generic terms, and domain names.  Continue reading...

Do the profound insights made by J. L. Austin and Paul Grice have any application to "conversations" in which the traffic in words is by definition all or nearly all one-way?  Continue reading...

Before the 20th century, generational names were rare or nonexistent. What changed? And what do the names of generations tell us about history and identity?  Continue reading...