Jan. 14-20 is Idiom Week, and today we thought we’d have a heart-to-heart about some strange phrases we use. Idioms, metaphors and similes are all types of figurative language. According to ...

Why do we say "I'm not pulling your leg"? Or "he kicked the bucket"? I don't mean etymologically, I mean logically. Why do we use idioms? I became fascinated by that question when I discovered that ...

Being a linguist — and someone who has tried to learn several languages (including English) in addition to my mother tongue (Flemish Dutch) — I have an annoying habit: instead of paying attention to ...