You probably don’t read a lot of books written in the 1820s. But if you did, you’d see the word “belie” a lot more. According to Google Ngram Viewer, in the early 1800s, “belie” appeared in books ...

Many people use simple English words every day, but many of them use these words in the wrong way. This happens because these words look similar, sound similar, or feel similar when we speak. But the ...

Overview Today’s NYT Connections puzzle #928 blends simple word logic with light musical clues, making it balanced and enjoyable.Clear category hints help playe ...

Even if you’re not a full-blown grammar nerd, you’ll find the origins of these words that changed meaning over time completely fascinating The English language is alive—and like any living thing, it ...

“It makes me mad when people say ‘literally’ when they mean ‘figuratively’ as it does sound stupid and confusing,” a poster on Quora wrote recently. “Is this normal?” In the replies, the top answer is ...

Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol. 175, No. 4 (April 2018), pp. 947-968 (22 pages) There is an ongoing debate about the meaning of lexical ...

It can be surprising to discover that the English language sometimes has pleasant surprises in words pronounced one way but meaning something entirely.

Words have no intrinsic meaning. That is to say that the words don’t have meaning in and of themselves. Words are symbols of thoughts. We attach thoughts to words. The degree to which those ...

Some time ago, I fell into conversation with a colleague about what we had been reading lately, and the person suggested that I absolutely must give Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” a try. The pandemic ...