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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Are Americans in different parts of the country starting to talk more alike? It’s a reasonable question to ask. Americans have always been footloose, and now that working remotely is possible, they’re relocating to other regions more than ever.
The Oxford Etymologist’s subject today is the origin of the verb “stink”.
The distinction between nouns and adjectives seems like it should be straightforward, but it’s not. Grammar is not as simple as your grade-school teacher presented it.
The Oxford Etymologist considers the etymology of the word “peeve.”
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
While we occasionally have the sense that we are rolling dice with words and hoping for good luck, meaning and communication would be impossible if we only and always succeed no better than luck would allow.
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
Writers need to love words—the good, the bad, and the irregular. And they need to respect syntax, the patterns that give words their form. But when writers understand the power of phrases, their sentences shine.
The Oxford Etymologist explores the history and development of the verb “flaunt”, “to display ostentatiously,”
The Oxford Etymologist considers feminist perspectives of language development, split infinitives, and the pronoun “they” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.”
Robert Lawson explores both toxic masculinity and positive masculinity in the media landscape, from Andrew Tate to the television show Brooklyn 99.
The Oxford Etymologist considers “like” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.”
The Oxford Etymologist answers readers’ questions about American English vowels, the word “night”, and “love” in English and Greek.
Quite naturally, speakers connect words that sound alike. From a strictly scholarly point of view, “sore” and “sorrow” are unrelated, but for centuries, people thought differently, and folk etymology united the two long ago.
English has a big bagful of auxiliary verbs. You may know these as helping verbs as they help the main verb express its meaning.