Apparently, one of the things that is making our Facebook feeds appetizing is a sauce—a combination of metrics mixed in exactly the right proportions to make this particular meal ever appealing.  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...

A craving for linguistic rationality – not to mention a fondness for wordplay – explains how acronyms begat backronyms.  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...