"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling was recently revealed to have written a crime novel, "The Cuckoo's Calling," using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. How she was found out involved a couple of linguistic experts analyzing the "little words" that are used in the novel's text.Continue reading...
SAT tutor Leigh Cousins, MS describes her summer campaign "to get [her] students AND their parents" to learn ten words on Vocabulary.com every morning as they eat breakfast.Continue reading...
Some stories about word origins recall the old Italian saying, se è non vero, è ben trovato: even if it is not true, it is well invented. One such too-good-to-check story involves the sporting usage of upset, which, it is said, came to be because an unfavored horse named Upset beat the great thoroughbred Man o' War.Continue reading...
In a review of Clive James's new translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy, critic Tom Bissell used the word theodicy to great effect.Continue reading...
Since the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, U.S. government officials have been wrestling with a question of semantics: should Morsi's removal be called a coup? The answer to the question has serious foreign-policy implications.Continue reading...