Sometimes there are words that you've seen, read, and maybe even used in conversation whose meaning you can never keep straight. Even after looking it up, the right definition doesn't stick. From our ...

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — William Shakespeare Words make a difference. They have meaning. Recently the debate began in Maryland on ...

Word meanings can shift radically, just like pronunciation. Called semantic change, a shift in a word's meaning occurs when frequent misuse becomes standard, or when metaphoric use becomes literal.

It's the most frequent word in the English language, accounting for around four percent of all the words we write or speak. It's everywhere, all the time, so clearly it must be doing something ...

In the brain, language pops up everywhere. All across the wrinkly expanse of the brain’s outer layer, a constellation of different regions handle the meaning of language, scientists report online ...