A Walk in the WoRds

False cognates  are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That...

pair v. paired, pair·ing, pairs v.tr. 1. To arrange in sets of two; couple. 2. To join in a pair; mate. 3. To provide a partner for. v...

pre·cur·sor  n. 1. One that precedes and indicates, suggests, or announces someone or something to come: Colonial opposition to unfair...

Spotted in The Week  magazine, December 14, 2012. yurt (yûrt) n. A circular, domed, portable tent used by nomadic peoples of central As...

I received a belated birthday gift from a dear friend last week. It was a hand-crafted sign with the above pictured phrase. She purchased...

As well as all sports fans and/or language enthusiasts, I present to you a compilation of language-related Super Bowl XLVI links. Macmillan ...

quadrisyllabic Having four syllables. A word such as dictatorship is thus a quadrisyllable . quantifier floating Proposed syntactic proce...

boy , n . Forgive me for the post title; I am addicted to amusing alliterations. Image via Facebook (origin unknown). Thanks to my friend C...

pandialectal A term used primarily in dialectology and sociolinguistics to characterize any linguistic feature, rule, etc., which is applic...

obligatory (Element) that cannot be deleted from a syntactic or other structure. E.g. in She left quickly , neither the subject ( She ) nor...

natural-kind terms In the semantic analysis of nouns, a type of general term for entities which have an identity in nature (as opposed to a...

mand An utterance by which a speaker tries to get an addressee to do something: thus a command, demand, request, etc. Mande Family of lang...

langage A French term introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure to refer to the human biological faculty of speech. It is distinguished in his ap...

kinaesthesis The sensation of movements in one's own body. Hence a major element in practical phonetics, in sensinge.g. how a consonant...

Winning Dictionary.com's Word of the Year tergiversate /tɚʤIvɚseɪt/ To change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a c...

Jacaltec Mayan language spoken in the interior of southern Guatemala, in an area close to the border with Mexico. jargon In the ordinary s...

idiolect The speech or dialect of a single individual. Hence idolect variation is variation within a language that is simply between one ...

clipping , n.2 c. The shortening of a word, etc.; also, the resulting shortened form. Many people are of the belief that till is a shortene...

H = Het Het = Egyptian Hieroglyph Hieroglyph = Fence hapax legomenon In Lexicology, a word which occurs only once in a text, author, or ext...

Brought to you by Slate , inspired by Rick Perry. Oops: A History When did we come up with a word for making mistakes? By Forrest Wickman Du...