Whether you're partnered, solo, or something in-between, this Valentine's Day expect men to be a little more chivalrous than every other day of the year. At least French men! Scientists at a French university hypothesized that words can unconsciously affect behavior, so they set up a test with the word "valentine" in the French city of Vannes. A 19-year-old asked 120 men, between 30 and 50, Read more

There are so many perfect and weird words to describe complicated emotions in other languages that I wish someone would go on a crusade to educate everyone. I went through a few hundred words with no direct English translation, which oddly there seems to be no word for. Perhaps Jeffrey Eugenides explained it best in Middlesex. Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't Read more

If Google Books' Ngram Viewer is any indication, sex may surpass love in popularity. Literary popularity, at least. According to Google's new research tool, which tracks words and phrases across more than five million books, the word "love" has been dropping in popularity over the past 200 years, before plateauing slightly above "sex" around 1980. Speaking of 1980, that's the year "feminism" Read more

From the Jersey Shore-derived "guido" to the World Cup-inspired "vuvuzela," suggestions have been rolling in for what 2010's word of the year should be. Urban Dictionary suggests the not-so-tasteful "gate rape" for the TSA's new stringent airport checks, New Oxford American Dictionary named the Sarah Palin-coined "refudiate" 2010's word, and the Global Language Monitor chose "spillcam," after Read more

I admit, I say it. Not in a pathological, valley-girl way, but in a casual, filler way. Sometimes it's unconscious, a nervous tick, and other times it punctuates a thought and just sounds right. It's easy, it's colloquial, and it's so widespread that I thought nobody cared anymore. After all, this is a language where BFF can make it into the dictionary! But this week actress Emma Thompson brought Read more

Bromance and chillax may be on Lake Superior State University's 2010 list of words that should be banned, but the OED added them to its massive vault of words for the ages anyway. Today the definitive tome added 39 words to its collection. Some seem right on (vuvuzela) while others sound like they've been stuck in the word-hopeful pile for years (wardrobe malfunction, buzzkill, chill pill), and Read more

Should "tanorexia" really be added to the Oxford English Dictionary? Probably not, even though it's been submitted for possible inclusion. Like the words that define a decade, many neologisms that seem very important at the time could sound quite silly later. Hence, Oxford's "vault" full of words submitted for possible inclusion but not deemed worthy for the dictionary. Says OED senior Read more

I don't like hearing about any languages disappearing, but the idea of French's demise seems intolerable. Fortunately, it is also probably impossible, at least in the near future, but French is a language in decline. Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) is an organization dedicated to promoting democracy, peace, and human rights in the 70 French-speaking countries and also to Read more