Linguistics in Real Life

Designer Mahmoud Tammam posed a creative challenge to himself: an experimental typographic series of Arabic illustrated words.

Let me tell you about a color that began as a fabled drink. It tasted harsh and punishing, like medicine. It began as a mythic elixir.

A picture book dedicated to English’s strangest quirks has made the New York Times bestseller list with the publisher scrambling to reprint. How did the rapper behind it dream it up?

David Skinner on why the American Heritage Dictionary closed its usage panel this year—and why it existed in the first place.

Or, at least, help you figure out when to use an Oxford comma.

When writers swap Trump for Cheeto and 45, it's not just a put-down. Removing a keyword is the anti-SEO—transforming your subject into a slippery, ungraspable, swarm.

Dialects are all there is.

Scrabble players might find themselves twerking their way to victory soon, as hundreds of new words have been added to the game.

It’s the audio version of The Dress.

Obviously, there needs to be a standard. But do we really want to leave it to science?