Latest articles by Arika Okrent
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What online dictionaries are learning about us
feature They've been tracking your word lookups for nearly two decades. And the results are striking
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Now you can Rickroll your friends (or enemies) in Klingon
feature "I am certainly considering a blood oath with you."
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Do your texts make you sound old?
feature Younger generations are far more adept at textspeak, a rich and subtle form of communication
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Listen to a quartet sing while you watch a close-up of their vocal cords
feature It's like Fantastic Voyage (without the lasers)
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4 crazy, early foreign language versions of Beatles songs
feature Spoiler: The Russian interpretation of "Let it Be" is not exactly inspirational
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Our favorite regional words from waaaay Northern Michigan
feature Holy wah! To make it in the U.P., you've gotta have sisu.
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24 Canadianisms way more interesting than 'eh?'
feature Toronto is nicknamed Hogtown, and if you're ever in the mood for a mixture of tomato juice and beer, ask for a Calgary Redeye
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15 harsh things critics said about The Nutcracker after its 1892 premiere
feature "It's a pity that so much good music is expended on such nonsense"
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7 book dedications that basically say 'screw you'
feature "I do not dedicate my book to any body; for I know nobody worth dedicating it to. I have no friends, no children, no wife, no home; — no relations, no well-wishers; — nobody to love, and nobody to care for"
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What the spelling bee loses by adding definitions
feature Scripps is turning its National Spelling Bee into a vocabulary quiz. B-A-D D-E-C-I-S-I-O-N.
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12 old words that survived by getting fossilized in idioms
feature "Sleight of hand" (not "slight of hand" as it's often misspelled) helped the Middle English word "sleight" survive obsolescence
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16 words that are much older than they seem
feature Every generation likes to think it invented slang anew, but often the latest words are actually very old
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21 wonderful words for wind
feature Do you know a willy-willy from a williwaw?
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8 symbols that we turned into words
feature How / and ♥ became words in their own right
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50 actual shades of gray
feature A 1912 book by Robert Ridgway named 1,115 colors, including dozens of shades of gray
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Why are pound and ounce abbreviated as 'lb' and 'oz'?
feature Abbreviations are usually self-explanatory. How come these two aren't?
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9 fascinating facts about the schwa
feature You probably don't realize it, but schwa is the most common vowel sound in English
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11 versions of 'Average Joe' from other countries
feature Morten Menigmand sounds anything but normal. And yet...
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11 words from a 1940s song about slang
feature Betty Hutton sings about how hard it is to understand her boyfriend, who uses too much slang
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11 totally redundant place names
feature Lake Tahoe means Lake Lake. La Brea Tar Pits means The Tar Tar Pits. And more!
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Where did the word 'dude' come from?
feature A massive, decade-long "dude" research project has finally yielded convincing results
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Why are 'rhyme' and 'rhythm' spelled like that?
feature Blame some showoffs in the 16th century
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Car-a-mel or car-mel? 3 reasons for syllabically ambiguous words
feature The wild world of diphthongs and epentheses
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Pop song titles are losing the love
feature In recent years, the percentage of music hits with love in the song title has been only 30 percent of what it was in 1980. Why?
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