Detail from Tacuinum Sanitatis, a 14th-century handbook of medieval health. The naming process, the act of naming the items of the world, is as old as the first words spoken by our ancestors. We can ...

From cabal to camel, a list of English words that derive from Hebrew. Hebrew is part of the family of Semitic languages. (In fact, the word “Semitic” is of Hebrew origin, deriving from the biblical ...

Dictionary Day on October 16 celebrates Noah Webster’s vital role in shaping American English. This day serves as an opportunity to enrich one’s vocabulary and language comprehension. Engaging in ...

Language is a living, breathing organism — constantly mutating, borrowing, and reinventing itself. The slang you casually drop into conversation today might have roots stretching back centuries, ...

We often hear fascinating stories about how things originated: the universe, the wheel, even pizza. But when it comes to the words we toss around every single day without a second thought, it's wild ...

The English language has been evolving for hundreds of years, which can make tracing the etymology of certain words a little bit tricky. Words come into use in a variety of ways—from being created by ...

The English lexicon includes some terms known as "proper words," which today apparently exist only in English. Cognates for them cannot be found in any other language. These are very simple and common ...