Take a look at the following English words: butcher, squirrel, mortgage, and choir. Does something seem off about them? At one point in time, the words move and love rhymed. So did blood, good, and ...

English, whatever its merits as a language, is a bitch to spell. There are so many rules, and so many exceptions, and yet in the end you have to learn a lot of words on a case-by-case basis. If future ...

Are you smarter than a spelling bee contestant? If you can spell these words, you might be. Merriam-Webster has announced the hardest words to spell in the English language ahead of the 92nd annual ...

Have you ever wondered why Americans and Brits spell English differently? How are colour and color the same word? Centre and center? What’s up with that? It’s all thanks to Noah Webster (yeah, the ...

Some of the brightest young minds just finished showcasing their knowledge of the English language. The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee wrapped up this week with participants navigating words the ...

One of the best things going on around 200 B.C.E. (from this linguist’s point of view, at least) was that a librarian in Alexandria, Aristophanes of Byzantium, invented the first punctuation system ...

Back in grade school, words like "onomatopoeia" and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" seemed insanely complicated and long. Surprisingly, neither of these is the ...

Check the 10 latest words. Learn their meanings, origins, and why these new global expressions became part of modern English.

Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year is “slop.” The word was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud. It evolved more ...

Of course, it's impossible to provide an exact number of words in English, since new words are being added to the dictionary, and falling out of use, pretty much constantly. But what's an approximate ...

English is a quirky, often confusing language that's been shaped and influenced by many others. As such, it has a massive variety of words—but here are some we think rise above the crowd and deserve ...