language

Kid, meaning a young goat, is a word that was borrowed from the Vikings around the 9th century. Centuries later, it came to mean a child and a teasing joke.

It's not just the quintessential corporate jargon word. "Synergy" goes back hundreds of years, with history in Christianity, medicine and psychology.

The etymology of mistletoe — a plant with small, oval evergreen leaves and waxy white berries — may strike some as repugnant.

How an obscure term used in anthropology leaped from the pages of academia into the Chinese meme world and then became part of Chinese government policymaking.

The 2025 selection follows its predecessors, "brain rot" from 2024, "rizz" from 2023 and "goblin mode" from 2022.

The popularity of the word honestly online and in conversation has soared in recent years. TBH, we'd like to know what's going on.

It wouldn't be spooky season without ghosts. But they weren't always the evil spirits we see in books and movies today. For Word of the Week, we look back on the origins of "ghost."

The word 'broadcasting' dates back centuries, and originally described a method of sowing seeds. But it took on a new meaning with the rise of radio in the 1920s.

How did a word that simply referred to a millennia-old beverage come to be the latest iteration of "what's up?"

Nerd has been part of our lexicon for three-quarters of a century, its geeky meaning embodied by some of the most recognizable characters in film and TV, but its origin story is a bit murky.