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 ...

English words tell a lot of stories. To get back to their origins, linguists apply the comparative method. Languages are not isolated entities, but belong to linguistic families—English is a west ...

The study of word origins (that is, etymology) is every bit the serious academic discipline you might expect it to be — except when it's not. As it turns out, people have a propensity to make false ...

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 ...