We often hear fascinating stories about how things originated: the universe, the wheel, even pizza. But when it comes to the words we toss around every single day without a second thought, it’s wild ...

IN one of my columns in an Urdu-language daily, I mentioned a book 'Sarguzasht-i-Alfaaz'. Written by Ahmed Din (1866-1929), the book, probably the first of its kind in Urdu, discussed the origins of ...

"Lesbian" is a demonym for the inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos, so why does it today describe female homosexuality?

Origin Uncertain: Unravelling the Mysteries of Etymology. By Anatoly Liberman. Oxford University Press; 344 pages; $29.99 and £22.99 MANY WORDS are puzzles themselves. “Conundrum” confounds scholars; ...

Stay on top of what’s happening in the Bay Area with essential Bay Area news stories, sent to your inbox every weekday. The Bay Bay Area-raised host Ericka Cruz Guevarra brings you context and ...

It can compliment, or dismiss. It sometimes conveys strong emotions, or no emotion at all. And that's "nice" -- a tidy, sturdy word that's remarkably adaptable. Hundreds of years ago, it meant someone ...

The Greeks built on Babylonian astronomy to make their observations of eclipses, and the word “ekleipsis” appears as early as the fifth century B.C. in Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian War, ...

The Wordle word of the December 31, 2025 is siren, a word that has survived by learning how to travel. It begins in myth, migrates into machinery, embeds itself in language, and ends up inside the ...

Know the origins of the names of your favorite fall foods. The fall harvest doesn't let word lovers go hungry: It yields a cornucopia of etymological roots as well. Feast on the bounty of these ...