H. Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening” contains some lovely examples of the rhetorical device called adynaton, which are impossible things, including: I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa...
There’s a Chinese term for a generalist that literally translates as “equipped with knives all over, yet none is sharp.” In Estonia, a similar idea is expressed with a phrase that translates as “nine trades, the tenth one...
Do spelling bees exist outside the United States? Not really. English is unique for how vast and complicated it is, which makes our bees pretty exciting. In France, they have competitions for taking dictation, and the Chinese hold races for looking...
Have a question about objective pronouns? Whom ya gonna call? Wait–is that right? Or would it be “who ya gonna call”? “Whom” may be technically correct, but insisting on it can get you called an elitist. It’s...
Mark in Panama City, Florida, asks about kowtow, after a boss wondered what it meant when someone said not to kowtow to him. The word entered English in the early 1800s from Chinese words in a Beijing dialect meaning “knock head,” a literal image of...
Books for language lovers include Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher’s lay-friendly tour of research on language and thought, and OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, Allan...