Star Wars has made many contributions to English, but none more significant that Jedi.  Continue reading...

A high percentage of that malarkey consists of euphemisms, which is why we could probably develop fusion energy by harnessing the grave-spinning of George Orwell.  Continue reading...

Here we are in Branding Land, circa 2017, where disparaging modifiers are paired with positive words and attached to messages intended to persuade and sell.  Continue reading...

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...

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...