Etymology is generally not a subject known to excite anyone outside of English grad students and Jeopardy! fans. People just don’t care that much about the origin of words. But that lack of interest ...

Science Diction is a bite-sized podcast about words—and the science stories behind them. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and sign up for our newsletter. Things aren’t off to a great start ...

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 ...

This week, people around the world will be opening heart-shaped boxes with “the food of the gods” nestled in crepe paper inside. But it took a lot of scientific and anthropological work to unearth the ...

One of my college history professors once claimed that the reason there is no English word that rhymes with orange is that it is one of the few words derived from Persian. He was only partly right; ...

This story originally appeared on Mental Floss. Every two years we get to marvel at them — no, not the superhuman feats of strength and skill from the greatest athletes in the world, but the weird and ...

In the 1660s, Robert Hooke looked through a primitive microscope at a thinly cut piece of cork. He saw a series of walled boxes that reminded him of the tiny rooms, or cellula, occupied by monks.