Understanding the varieties of conversational styles can mean the difference between feeling you’re understood and being insulted. “High-involvement” speakers interrupt or talk along with someone else to signal their enthusiasm...
If you make a beeline for something, you’re taking the shortest route possible. You’re also mimicking bee-havior! After a bee has visited enough flowers to gather nectar, she flies straight back to the hive. And: Even a word like...
Among the words added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2024 is babyccino, “a children’s drink consisting of hot milk that has been frothed up with pressurized steam so as to resemble a cappuccino.” Originating in Australia, this...
German filmmaker Werner Herzog is known for such documentaries as Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo. He’s also fascinated with what he calls “the limits of language,” as evident in his 1976 documentary how fast auctioneers can talk, How...
During the late 19th and early 20th century, thousands of volunteers helped crowdsource the Oxford English Dictionary. This venerable reference work includes citations sent in by inventors, eccentrics, scientists and educators, an Arctic explorer —...
In the 19th century, the Oxford English Dictionary was a bit like the Wikipedia of its day, in that much of its information was crowdsourced, gathered by thousands of volunteers. Linguist and lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie tells the stories of many of...