A new book exploring the origins of common food terms — from bialy to lima bean to bibimbap — is a fascinating history of how we eat and cook. By Kim Severson Used judiciously, the snappy tidbits of ...

Etymology is the study of the origins of words and how their usage has changed over time. It's every bit the serious academic discipline you might expect it to be — except when it's not. As it turns ...

Etymology is the study of the origins of words and how their usage has changed over time. It's every bit the serious academic discipline you might expect it to be — except when it's not. As it turns ...

Well, “comrade,” I bet you always thought that word comes from Russian. Not so. Although the term was often associated with communism in Western culture during the last century, Communists of the ...

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.

For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...