LINGUISTICS

Some birds communicate different meanings based on the order of the notes they sing.

The English language loves a good loan word.

A study of online strategy game-players revealed an unsettling trend.

Some scholars have dedicated decades of their lives to cracking the code.

The word “huh” packs a lot of meaning into just one syllable.

What was once literature's favorite exclamation is now as dead as the Romantic poets who used it.

Take a look at how different languages are connected to one another with this wonderful illustration by Minna Sundberg.

For over a century, a controversy has been brewing over what might be called the Loch Ness Monster of dialect study: the elusive singular “y’all.” There are a few who claim to have seen it in the wild, and many who denounce such claims as nonsense. Does i

It turns out, there are a number of things about English that conspire to make “I could care less” a less irrational phrase than it might seem.

Wikimedia Commons"Happy as a clam" is one of those expressions that makes you wonder: Does this phrase come from an actual measurement of the happiness of

My dad always used to preface the dropping of an F-bomb or a tangent of creative profanity with a request that listeners “pardon his French.”

Around this time of year, we’re all loosening our belts and getting ready to gorge ourselves on hot, gravy-laden turkey. So we couldn’t help but wonder about things at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum: the “cold turkey” invoked when people up