Arika Okrent

Editor-at-large

Arika Okrent is editor-at-large at TheWeek.com and a frequent contributor to Mental Floss. She is the author of In the Land of Invented Languages, a history of the attempt to build a better language. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and a first-level certification in Klingon. Follow her on Twitter.

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13 words of the year from other countries

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The American Dialect Society's word of the year

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Your family name did not come from a mistake at Ellis Island

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8 ad headlines that sneakily ding the competition

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20 awesomely titled trade magazines

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In defense of hamantashen

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How to converse properly: 18 tips from old etiquette books

"But breath and shadow, nothing more." -Sophocles

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29 answers to the question 'What is a human being?'

An untitled illustration by Charles Dana Gibson depicts a pair of fashionable young women in London, c. 1896-1898.

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The 65-year battle over the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act

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From our friends at Mental Floss

6 early theories about the origin of language

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7 overlooked Thanksgiving rituals, according to sociologists

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How to wrap a present with mathematical precision (and waste less paper)

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The most expensive properties in 11 special edition Monopoly games

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The strange world of USDA place labels

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Audiophile: Listen Smarter

5 baffling foreign-language versions of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song

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Audiophile: Listen Smarter

4 surprising things Facebook has learned from your relationship status

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35 classy slang terms for naughty bits from the past 600 years

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How many spaces should there be at the end of a sentence?

Are you still using LOL to indicate laughter? Stop it, grannies.

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Do your texts make you sound old?

Spelling Bee contestant Vismaya Jui Kharkar of Utah tries to spell her word during the 6th round of last year's competition.

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What the spelling bee loses by adding definitions

A young man makes the OK sign in the 1950s, more than a century after the ubiquitous expression was coined.

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Where did the expression 'OK' come from?

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4 crazy, early foreign language versions of Beatles songs

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9 reasons we adore this little girl's sign language version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas'

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7 fun facts about the Dothraki language from Game of Thrones

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Watch the Surf Punks explain the latest slang in this 1980s news report

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12 onomatopoeias from around the world

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How does an exception prove a rule?

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From our friends at Mental Floss

How many words do Eskimos really have for snow?

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5 words that are spelled weirdly because someone got the etymology wrong

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11 classy insults with classical Greek and Latin roots

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26 of Noah Webster's spelling changes that didn't catch on

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15 harsh things critics said about The Nutcracker after its 1892 premiere

The Chinese character biang is made up of 57 strokes.

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What is the most complex Chinese character?

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11 fun word lists to drill your vocabulary on

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Don't use 'pants' for 'pantaloons': 19 surprising rules copy editors used to enforce

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11 words from a 1940s song about slang