Linguist Gareth Roberts joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the etymologies of English words. How did the first languages first form? Was there once a single common language ...

Origin Uncertain: Unravelling the Mysteries of Etymology. By Anatoly Liberman. Oxford University Press; 344 pages; $29.99 and £22.99 MANY WORDS are puzzles themselves. “Conundrum” confounds scholars; ...

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, 54 percent of adults, nearly 130 million people, aged 16 to 74 lack literacy proficiency, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. GRAHAM, N.C. (WGHP) — The ...

This story originally appeared on Mental Floss. Every two years we get to marvel at them — no, not the superhuman feats of strength and skill from the greatest athletes in the world, but the weird and ...

Jess Zafarris began her journey into word nerdery in college, where her English literature coursework introduced her to the Old English of “Beowulf” and Chaucer’s Middle English. While pursuing her ...

In 1871, Darwin hypothesized that “the difference in mind between man and the higher animals…is one of degree and not of kind.” In the case of language, attempts to define that degree have been an ...

Everyone knows what the slur “kike” means, but not everyone agrees where the antisemitic term comes from. That mystery is back in the headlines with yet another viral use of the slur — this time, it ...