(Despic-Emoji t-shirt on sale at the NeatoShop)In Book I of his Confessions, Saint Augustine of Hippo explained how he as a child acquired language:When they named any thing, and as they spoke turned towards it, I saw an...

(Photo via War Eagle Reader)The rabbits in the novel Watership Down can count up to four. Any number higher than that is "hrair", which means "more than four" but is often translated as "a thousand."This is not dissimila...

Whoa! The New York Times has a 25-question survey that tries to discern where in the U.S. you live (or were raised) by how you pronounce words. They pegged me pretty good, as I live in the triangle plotted by the cities...

There are over 7,100 known living languages being spoken in the world, and there's probably one single commonality in all of them: a universal word that binds all humanity and underscores that we are all often in the sta...

Map shows the regions with languages descending from the 7 Eurasiatic language families (Image: Pagel et al./PNAS) We're all just part of a big, happy, linguistic family. Evolutionary biologist...

Every day, scientists are striving to make our lives better and to better understand our lives through a range of experiments on just about every subject. Unfortunately, not all of these projects work out so well. These...

It's easy to see how some nicknames came to be. "Alex" for instance is often shortened to "Al." But do you ever wonder how "Richard" becomes "Dick," William becomes "Bill"...

If you're anything like me, there are certain business words or phrases in that will make you scream if you hear them uttered from anyone's lips just one more time.  Buzzword Bingo has swept across Corporate America for...