All Verbal Energy

A look at a go-to metaphor for headline writers: Who are yeomen, anyway?

We take a look at some fossils – words that live on in just a single idiom.

Activists are reframing the terms of public debate by refusing to call road deaths ‘accidents’ – and they’ve gotten the attention of The Associated Press.

Simplification of European place names continues as Prague government adopts a one-word name for the country.

While others sort out the legal and political implications, the Monitor’s language columnist has her eye on what the megaleak means for adjectives.

A psychologist seeks to enrich the emotional landscape of English speakers by introducing them to 216 “untranslatable” foreign words

A look at oil metaphors in the lexicon of political put-downs – and food.

A look at the College Board’s new approach to testing vocabulary.

Engineering is all around us, but let’s not forget its warlike roots.

In language as in law, Antonin Scalia showed a welcome capacity for collaboration and friendship across ideological divides.

A look at the metaphors behind the names of parliaments

When British scientists get approval to ‘edit’ human genes, it’s clear the verb has slipped its moorings in the world of publishing.

Remember the old days, when political parties had ‘wings’?

When Benjamin Franklin needed a name for his device for storing electricity, he borrowed a military term.

New research helps explain how infants acquire language skills – by losing their ability to discriminate sounds they don’t need.

A friend’s question about possible connections between a couple of sound-alike words serves as a reminder that with words, just as with people, some that appear closely related, aren’t, and others that don’t, are.

A chart may be worth a thousand words, but graphics give rise to some useful idioms.

A revisiting of history on the presidential campaign trail provides an occasion for reviewing may and might.

The Monitor’s language columnist is loath to argue against usefulness as a criterion for the vocabulary high-schoolers should acquire; but ‘obscure’ words may be the spices in our verbal stew.

A phrase coming out of the Paris conference acknowledges subtly a sense of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions.