The answer to this seemingly innocuous question that comes up again and again involves the Jewish Enlightenment, Jewish diaspora nationalism, and a little-known protest in front of the Forverts ...

A swear word is like a linguistic punch in the nose. Virtually every language and culture has them—and virtually every language and culture formally disapproves of them. But that doesn’t stop them ...

What’s in a swear? The world’s filthiest words typically refer to something vulgar or taboo, for one. But there’s something else swears across the world’s languages have in common. They’re all missing ...

Once swearwords were dismissed as a sign of low intelligence, now researchers argue the ‘power’ of taboo words has been overlooked When researchers asked people around the world to list every taboo ...

How many words does the German language have? We'll get to the bottom of this question in the second episode of our podcast ...

The pandemic has changed how people talk and write. In English, dictionaries have noted a few dozen new entries and revisions: social distancing, frontliner, super-spreader, "Zoom" as a verb. But in ...

Guillaume Thierry has received funding from the European Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Biotechnology ...