Some holiday words have more than one meaning, like "trim" the tree. And some meanings have more than one word, like "gift" ...

Will was the Phones Editor at Android Police from August 2022 to May 2025, which usually meant his desk was covered in a dozen different smartphones at any given time. Prior to that, he was a news ...

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered ...

Word meanings can shift radically, just like pronunciation. Called semantic change, a shift in a word's meaning occurs when frequent misuse becomes standard, or when metaphoric use becomes literal.

Even if you’re not a full-blown grammar nerd, you’ll find the origins of these words that changed meaning over time completely fascinating The English language is alive—and like any living thing, it ...

Words have no intrinsic meaning. That is to say that the words don’t have meaning in and of themselves. Words are symbols of thoughts. We attach thoughts to words. The degree to which those ...

Meaning associations between words have always fascinated people. Aristotle was among the first to study the connection between metaphorical language and riddles, coining the term metaphor to refer to ...