It's a leap! It's a limit! It's all tied up! It's ready to go! The many meanings—and origins—of a familiar word.  Continue reading...

When is it time to give in and accept the misuse and misinterpretation of common expressions?  Continue reading...

"Plantation"--a word with a complicated history in the US--appears in many brand and community names. Is it time to abandon it?  Continue reading...

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...