Thanks to the evolution of language, technology, and lots of hyperbole, these words used to convey a lot more merit, emotion, or simply seriousness than they do nowadays. Ah, “genius.” Once reserved ...

It’s a very satisfying thing to learn that there’s a word for an experience you didn’t know could be described by a word. Learning that, for example, clinomania is an “excessive desire to stay in bed” ...

Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year is “slop.” The word was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud. It evolved more generally to mean something of little value.

Children learn language effortlessly and completely voluntarily. They learn new words miraculously fast. A teenager masters about 60,000 words of their mother tongue by the time they finish high ...

Some time ago, I fell into conversation with a colleague about what we had been reading lately, and the person suggested that I absolutely must give Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” a try. The pandemic ...

Tariffs are President Trump's favorite word. That's not an exaggeration. "I always say 'tariffs' is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary," he said at a rally just hours after his ...