In the American West, wildfires have become both more frequent and more destructive. With this ominous shift has come a new vocabulary for describing fire and its outcome – and new attention to some of the oldest words in our language.  Continue reading...

These days we need all the levity, lunar or otherwise, that we can get. This lexical lunacy is a flimsy excuse for me to write about my favorite type of word: the reduplication. From ack-ack to zip-zap, reduplicative words are silly, childish, catchy, animalistic, nonsensical, and awesome.  Continue reading...

Canons, whether you believe that their prime movers are divine or not, are the work of humans, and are surely among our most imaginative creations. But our ways of interpreting and implementing the language of religious canons are equally imaginative and creative.  Continue reading...

Whatever you read into it, the "All the king's ___" snowclone is now solidly embedded in the popular consciousness and in headline-writers' bag of tricks.  Continue reading...

As long as there's a literal Constitution to amend and a metaphorical constitution to defend, constitution will remain an important word. Here's a look at this versatile word, just in time for September 17th — Constitution Day.  Continue reading...

Turns out evasion can take the form of a Trojan horsepucky so subtle and tiny most would not recognize it as evasive at all. This expanded edition of The Evasion-English Dictionary shows how small, everyday, nothing-to-see-here words can hide as much hokum as the longest and vaguest jargon.  Continue reading...