By Anne Curzan. I have been thinking a lot about button-down shirts recently. This is after many years of giving them — or at least giving the word for them — very little thought at all. More...

By William Germano. It’s hard not to be familiar with the term Big Pharma, an acidulated nickname for the pharmaceutical business. More...

By Lucy Ferriss. The use of the reflexive pronoun in a nonreflexive way seems to be a growing phenomenon, but the data are mixed. Among the and -self phrases, and myself occurs most frequently, according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English as well as Google’s Ngram Viewer – but and myself, per COCA, has declined significantly since 1990, whereas and himself has risen. More...

By Lucy Ferriss. Anyone who writes seriously pays attention to punctuation; we know that. That devilish comma in the Second Amendment has spawned countless 21st-century opinion columns despite its obvious roots in 18^th-century conventions. More...

By Allan Metcalf. In academe, as well as in the republic of letters, plagiarism remains the unforgivable sin. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that this dreadful word (and the activity for which it stands) has been in our language for four centuries, and further that it derives ultimately from “classical Latin plagiarius, person who abducts the child or slave of another, kidnapper, seducer, also a literary thief.”
Kidnapper of someone’s beloved words! No wonder we react so strongly. More...

By Allan Metcalf. There’s nothing like a dramatic pause to heighten the excitement of an announcement. As we’ll see next weekend, that’s how the Oscars are announced. The presenter declares “And the winner is … ” or “and the Oscar goes to … ” and then pauses to open the envelope and read the name. If the presenter has trouble opening or reading, so much the better. Every second increases the suspense. More...

By Allan Metcalf. It’s smart … ish. It’s cool … ish. It’s up-to-date … ish.

Well, ish!

No, I can’t claim that ish is new. In fact, ish has been in the English language since before there was an English language. More...