English is full of redundancies—so why are we bothered by only a select few?

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John McWhorter teases his new book about off-color English expressions, starting with c!#k.

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A single word—take "self," for example—reveals the thorny nature of literary translation.

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Don't be fooled into thinking that English is a typical language. It's not.

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For many languages, the idea that the subject belongs up front is plain backwards.

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How did a word meaning "with bread" come to sprout its corporate connotation?

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From the evolution of ain't to double negatives, simply saying no is wonderfully complex.

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Our language contains a trove of buried clues, petrified remnants of its past. But you have to know where to dig.

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Lots of languages divide words into categories, like male and female. How does that happen?

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Words have a way of rebelling against their etymological parents, acquiring meanings of their own.

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