There are essentially two ways to pick a “word of the year.” One common approach is to select from words whose common usage reflects some quality of the year past. Expect to see “occupy,” “winning,” etc., on many selections this December. Another way involves actually using the dictionary. Is there a word that captures the character of 2011, regardless of its popularity or ubiquity? CONTINUE READING »

The study of words is called lexicology—not to be confused with phraseology, philology, syntax, morphology, lexicography or semantics. How do lexicologists create new words? Actually, they don’t—think how ridiculous it would be if a deranged lexicologist had the power and desire to create hundreds of new words? Rather they observe the way English is used and choose words from their findings. CONTINUE READING »

This weekend the Catholic Church is changing the required English-language Mass. This is a big deal. It is the third time in the 1700-year history of the Church that the Mass is being formally changed, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. First here’s a brief history of the Catholic Church. The Church and its sacred documents were codified at the Council of Nicaea in 325, and it didn’t really change for 1200 years. As a response to the Protestant Reformation, CONTINUE READING »

Today the word “uppity” rose to number seven on Google’s list of extremely popular searches. The reason? Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as “uppity-ish.” Specifically, Limbaugh was discussing a Nascar rally on Sunday the 20th where Michelle Obama was booed by the crowd. Limbaugh said he believed the crowd was upset because “They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism.” CONTINUE READING »

You may have heard that the U.S. Congress recently reaffirmed that pizza is a vegetable. Of course, the situation is more complicated than that. The U.S. Department of Agriculture—which regulates the school lunches served to millions of American children—proposed a new standard for school lunches. Specifically, they suggested reducing the amount of sodium in school lunches, and they also wanted to cut down on french fries and pizza. CONTINUE READING »

In January, when Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded, it was unclear whether she would fully recuperate or regain her ability to talk. Giffords was injured on the left side of her brain near the section called Broca’s area that controls language.

However, recovery specialists have started using a unique, unexpected therapy to help patients recover their language ability: music. CONTINUE READING »

From Portland to St. Louis, the Occupy protests have been gaining momentum and continue to be front-page news. The protests sent us to the dictionary (where else?) to look up the etymology of the word “occupy.” We found an unexpected obsolete definition. The term occupy formerly meant something very different than its current common meaning. From the early 1500s to the 1800s, occupy CONTINUE READING »

If you’ve ever traveled within the U.S. and tried to order a sweet carbonated beverage, you’ve probably been misunderstood and confused. Depending on where you are, a soft drink might be called any number of things: coke, soda, pop. Ask anyone which is the right word and they will vehemently defend their preference, but why do people who speak the same language use different words in the first place? CONTINUE READING »

11/11/11 is a much-anticipated day. Obviously, it contains all of the same digits (like 1/1/1, 2/2/2 and so on…), and it is a palindromic date. (That means the numbers are the same backwards and forwards). 11 is a very odd number and has been subject to much interpretation over the ages. According to Yahoo! News, medieval scholars believed that while most numbers had positive and negative qualities, the number 11 CONTINUE READING »

What do apostrophes have to do with the federal holiday this Friday? Well, there’s a confusing apostrophe in Veterans’ Day—or is there? Veterans Day is often incorrectly written as “Veteran’s Day” or “Veterans’ Day.” “Veteran’s Day” would definitely be incorrect because it means a day for only one veteran. While “Veterans’ Day” does encompass multiple veterans, that spelling is incorrect according to CONTINUE READING »