I’ve had the privilege of being quoted or mentioned in a lot of newspapers and magazines over the years, but as an minor-league word nerd, this one ranks as am...

A few weeks ago, I asked the people who follow my Twitter account to describe the difference between lemons and limes. My immediate prompt was because I wa...

I’ve long been a fan of playing the dozens , as is to be expected from anyone who loves language. Last night, in a fit of my usual insanity, I thought it’d be...

One of the most useful words that I’ve been fixated on for a while is “retcon”. A portmanteaublend of “retroactive continuity”, retcon comes from the world of...

From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a delightful family tree of Indo-European languages , though I was kinda miffed at the o...

Wow, you kids really like overanalysis of imaginary pet languages, huh? The best thing about writing Cats Can Has Grammar has been the responses. Mat...

If you spend any time at all observing net culture, then you’ll have been unable to miss the recent explosion in popularity of lolcats . This relatively recen...

Though I’ve been familiar with the terms for years, I wasn’t sure of the exact differences between a pidgin and a creole. So: A creole is the combination...

Erin McKean , frock star and lexicographer, offers some wisdom : You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co...

I sure do love words. And even better, my friends do too. So they make great websites and books about it. Mark made Neologasm , which I am very partial to bec...

From Dean’s World , Understanding Language: “No it is not stupid, it is not ungrammatical, it is not backwards. It is perfectly valid language, and by ref...

These are the things you must know: Deprecated is not the same word as depreciated. Formerly and formally are not interchangeable. Nobody knows how to spell. R...

This is the thing I want you to remember, for the next time that you need it: (And I hope that next time is soon.) ö is created by the ö entity. Thank you, I...

I have a firm conviction, that I’ve held for years, that language errors are the key to our future understanding of brain function. Especially amongst the bili...

Just go read it. It’s the Vancouver Sun’s rendition of the story of Dean and Gail and language and love and, in passing, Stewart and Caterina , and ho...

Words that I use too much in everyday conversation: vexed alas fungible poop I need new words. Any suggestions?...

I have some comments to make about Safire’s list of language books , but I’m too sleepy to do it right now. I’ll get to it later, but meanwhile, consider all...

"What do you call the wooden part of the tree?" Me: "Uh, the trunk ." "I knew there was a word for it."...