Linguist Gareth Roberts joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the etymologies of English words. How did the first languages first form? Was there once a single common language ...

Enhance your vocabulary with our Word of the Day series. In this series, we introduce a new word every day and explore its ...

Some holiday words have more than one meaning, like "trim" the tree. And some meanings have more than one word, like "gift" ...

Our modern English word "Noel" is derived from the Middle English word nowel and means "a shout of joy or Christmas song." However, the root of the word is actually French, meaning " Christmas season ...

According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, 54 percent of adults, nearly 130 million people, aged 16 to 74 lack literacy proficiency, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...