Tag Archives: language

The Drive reports: Gas station and convenience store chain Kum & Go will reportedly rebrand after being bought out in 2023. The new owners are reportedly worried the double entendre in Kum & Go’s name could hurt its business prospects. Established in Iowa in 1959, Kum & Go was acquired by FJ Management’s Maverik chain in April 2023. After blowing …

The Oxford University Press reports: After over 30,000 language lovers around the world got involved to help refine our shortlist of eight words, we are pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year 2023 is rizz. Through head-to-head competitions over a four-day voting period, the public narrowed down our shortlist of worthy contenders to four finalists: rizz, Swiftie, …

“Here’s the problem. The problem is that anonymity on the internet allows for the ghettoizing of beliefs that are not approved by the regime. So, a lot of people will say, well, I have to be anonymous on the internet because if my boss finds out that I’ve got these views, they’ll fire me. But you’re only in the position …

The Associated Press reports: In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.” Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice. Lookups for the word are routinely heavy on the dictionary company’s site but were boosted to new heights throughout …

Science news outlet PsyPost reports: Research published in the Journal of Sex Research aimed to determine whether listeners could detect if a man is bisexual from his voice alone. The findings indicate that people are not able to determine if a man identifies as bisexual based on his voice alone. Additionally, when people listened to the voices of gay, straight, …

The Associated Press reports: The State Department said Thursday it has adopted Turkey’s preferred spelling for the name of the country, Turkiye, acceding to a request from the NATO ally after several months of hesitation. The department has instructed that new official documents refer to Turkiye instead of Turkey, although the pronunciation will not change, officials said. The move comes …

The Wall Street Journal reports: In April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked the international community to recognize his nation by its traditional name, spelled “Türkiye” and pronounced Tour-key-yeh. His government promoted the shift as an effort to instill national pride—and silence associations with the Thanksgiving bird and pejorative uses of the word “turkey.” An article published by the website …

The Guardian reports: Turkey’s government has sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that it be referred to as Türkiye, the state-run news agency has reported. The move is seen as part of a push by Ankara to rebrand the country and dissociate it from the bird of the same name and negative connotations associated with it. President …

The CBC reports: The streets of downtown Montreal were flooded with protesters on Saturday as many gathered against Bill 96, the Quebec government’s proposed law to reform its Charter of the French language. Organized by groups that represent the province’s English-speaking community, the protest sought to send a strong message to the majority government that the legislation as it stands …

The New York Times reports: In less than six months, Wordle has gone from a gift to a viral sensation, to being an official part of The New York Times portfolio. Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, created the game as a gift for his partner. It was released to the public in October, and it exploded in popularity …

The Associated Press reports: With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine. “This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, said. “It really represents two different stories. One is the science story, which is …

The New York Times reports: Apologies to jab, shot and “Fauci ouchie.” Oxford Languages’s 2021 Word of the Year is “vax.” That may seem like a no-brainer. But as with so much about public health, the power lies in the numbers. “Vaccine,” already a common-enough word in English, more than doubled in frequency over the past year, as vaccines against …

The Washington Post reports: It’s clear that the pandemic has changed dining as we know it, sometimes in potentially permanent ways. Now, so many of the catchphrases we got to know while eating in the covid era are making their way into the firmament of the lexicon. Ever order a burger from a “ghost kitchen” for “curbside delivery”? Merriam-Webster is …

The Guardian reports: Lockdown, the noun that has come to define so many lives across the world in 2020, has been named word of the year by Collins Dictionary. Lockdown is defined by Collins as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces”, and its usage has boomed over the last year. Other pandemic-related …

ABC News reports: The language mavens at Merriam-Webster have declared the personal pronoun “they” their word of the year based on a 313 percent increase in look-ups on the company’s search site, Merriam-Webster.com, this year when compared with 2018. “They” got an early start last January with the rise of model Oslo Grace on top fashion runways. The Northern Californian …

“Man, the word ‘fag’ is a really hateful word, isn’t it? Especially when it’s like one gay calling another gay guy that? Hoo! Have you ever been in the middle of one of them hate marriages? Hoo! It’s like, wait a minute, we’re not supposed to say that word. How come you’re saying that word? “What? Oh, I just can’t …

Via press release from Merriam-Webster: Our Word of the Year for 2018 is justice. It was a top lookup throughout the year at Merriam-Webster.com, with the entry being consulted 74% more than in 2017. The concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year: racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice. …

CNN reports: Iran, North Korea, Syria and … commas. While Mike Pompeo is focused on a number of key geopolitical concerns, an email obtained by CNN suggests that the secretary of state also appears to have had it, up to, here, with, the rampant, improper use of commas by State Department staff. In the last few months, two emails have …

The Washington Examiner reports: President Trump said Thursday that he no longer talks to Steve Bannon, and accused reporters of exaggerating their relationship a day after his legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter to the former White House chief strategist over remarks he made about Trump’s son. “I don’t talk to him. That’s just a misnomer,” Trump told the press …

From Merriam-Webster: Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2017 is feminism. The word was a top lookup throughout the year, with several spikes that corresponded to various news reports and events. The general rise in lookups tells us that many people are interested in this word; specific spikes give us insight into some of the reasons why. Feminism spiked following …