In his letter to the editor, Jack Elder talked about the definition of the word “Dixie” (“‘Dixie’ isn’t racist,” July 26). We must remember the English language is a living, constantly changing thing.

Thanks to the evolution of language, technology, and lots of hyperbole, these words used to convey a lot more merit, emotion, or simply seriousness than they do nowadays. Ah, “genius.” Once reserved ...

I'm working on a project for which we need to keep a running list of items. Someone suggested that we call it the "Master Tracking List", and I instantly found that a little off-putting. For me, it ...

The word ‘master’ can describe having talent in pretty much any area — are all of these uses going to become offensive, too? Rice University has decided to stop using the term “master” to describe the ...

Even if you’re not a full-blown grammar nerd, you’ll find the origins of these words that changed meaning over time completely fascinating The English language is alive—and like any living thing, it ...

Guiding students to infer the meaning of a word from a set of images may be more powerful than providing a definition. Vocabulary is crucial to reading comprehension, but it can be hard to ...

It’s a very satisfying thing to learn that there’s a word for an experience you didn’t know could be described by a word. Learning that, for example, clinomania is an “excessive desire to stay in bed” ...

Children learn language effortlessly and completely voluntarily. They learn new words miraculously fast. A teenager masters about 60,000 words of their mother tongue by the time they finish high ...

Much has been said about the remarkable ability humans have to extract meaning from language. That ability is remarkable indeed. In a split second, we perceive a spoken or written word and immediately ...

Yes it does have a negative connotation especially when used with slave. Many people will roll their eyes and make it appear that the case of someone using the negative connotation of master/slave in ...