In case you missed it, Google Trends recently researched the hardest-to-spell words in the first four months of this year. Their analysis identified what words was searched most often when people typed “how to spell ___” into the Google search engine. The results were tabulated by state, then published in this map. According to a
I have on occasion written about the English language, especially how it morphs to keep up with changing times. Today I have another example — The relentless advance of technology has necessitated the creation of a new word — retronym. Google it, and you get this definition — a new term created from an existing
Sometimes language expresses concepts, and since different cultures develop in different circumstances, other languages have words that English-speakers have no need for. For example, I have always heard that Eskimo have many words for snow*. I’ve found an article that highlights more of these examples, like malu, an Indonesian word for “the sudden experience
We all realize English is a dynamic language, constantly adding words and changing meanings. The most common definition of gay has completely changed in my lifetime, and google has been added as both a noun and a verb. (Yes, it was a word before, but as googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.) But
There are anywhere from 400,000 to a million words in the English language, and they can be organized in any number of ways. One of the latest is to divide words into three tiers. Tier One consists of the basic words. These are words like book, girl, and dog and usually have only one meaning. There
Did you know languages can be grouped into “families”? For example, English is a Germanic language, and the Romance Family includes Latin and all its derivatives, including Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian. I was thinking about this during my recent trip to Japan. To a Westerner like me, the writing systems in Asia all look
English is full of interesting words. For example, the popular shade of blue known as turquoise comes from a French term that means “Turkish stone.” Some thought incorrectly that these stones all came from Turkey. While turquoise was in fact traded in Turkey, the true origin of these bluish gems was probably Iran or the
I was surprised to learn recently that the debate about who wrote the plays and verse attributed to William Shakespeare is still alive. My question “Who wrote Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets?” got 259,000 hits on Google. The main problem seem to be the lack of recordkeeping. We simply don’t know that much about the man,
Word meanings can have fascinating histories. For example, the heavily armored vehicle was named a “tank” to disguise its true purpose. There are oil tanks, water tanks, etc, so who would expect one that moves and shoots back? Here’s a more contemporary example. Why are unmanned aircraft called drones? I found one explanation in the
I think there is a technical term for everything. I’m sure you’re familiar with this symbol: ¶ If (unlike me) you’ve ever wondered what it is, it’s a pilcrow and it has a long history. According to Wikipedia, it can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one