By William Germano. The news from France is grim. Whether you adore France or have a love-hate relationship with all things French, one thing we’ve all been able to agree on is the spelling of  the words hôtel and août.

But l’Académie française, guardian of the French vocabulary, has agreed that la langue can do without  the pointy lid that sits atop certain words.

The plan to remove the circumflex has sparked outcry and bemused commentary. A New York Times op-ed beat me to the punch with its title, “Hats Off to the Circumflex.” Twitter has enjoyed an uptick of remarks under the hashtag #JeSuisCirconflexe, which I hope is deeply ironic. More...

By William Germano. Once upon a time, American conspiracy theory focused on the Kennedy assassination. That was then.
Even those of us least susceptible to paranoid tendencies now inhabit a conspiracy culture where fantasists and bigots, analysts and whistleblowers converge. More...

By Heidi Landecker. In his penultimate semester, our son, a double-degree senior in business and economics at Large Public U., discovered he was three humanities credits shy of what he would need to graduate. We weren’t that surprised. More...

By Amitava Kumar. Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is a classic of its kind. It illustrates Hemingway’s “iceberg theory,” which requires that a story find its effectiveness by hiding more than it reveals. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the conversation between a man and a woman waiting for a train at a station in Spain turns on the discussion of an imminent operation. Neither party uses the word “abortion.” What is omitted in the discussion adds to the tension felt by the reader of the story. More...

By Allan Metcalf. As the Trumpus continues, our living language stretches to accommodate the new notions and perspectives generated by the Donald’s inimitable political career. The lexicographer David Barnhart, author of the quarterly Barnhart Dictionary Companion, has been quick to keep up with the new vocabulary. More...

By Allan Metcalf. Nine months ago, Donald Trump brought forth on this continent a new model for attaining the U.S. presidency, one that focused on statements so outrageous, and thereby so delicious for journalists, that he would be sure to make the top headlines day after day. And incidentally to capture the favorable attention of voters. More...

By Allan Metcalf. Exactly how it became the utilitarian sign of approval and agreement, not to mention the two-letter summation of American pragmatism, is too complicated to explain here. You can find the details in my OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, based on the research of Allen Walker Read, the great historian of American English.
As the book explains, there is no doubt that the Boston Morning Post of March 23, 1839, is the true origin of OK — though its popularity has inspired lots of alternate theories giving it a more dignified beginning. More...

By Allan Metcalf. For 177 years, ever since OK was born on Page 2 of the Boston Morning Post on March  23, 1839, OK has been a favorite of politicians. Within a year of its birth, Martin Van Buren, running in vain for re-election as president, was supported by OK Clubs. The initials referred to Old Kinderhook, since he was from Kinderhook, N.Y. More...

By Allan Metcalf. If you’re running for president, as half a dozen candidates are doing these days, you need money, you need meetings, you need enthusiastic supporters — and last but not least, you need slogans. Right. More...

By Lucy Ferriss. Nineteen fifty-four, the year of my birth,* witnessed Brown v. Board of Education, Elvis Presley’s first successful  song, mass testing of the Salk polio vaccine, Hank Aaron’s first major league baseball game, and the coining of the word nowheresville. That last is according to the Oxford English Dictionary’s new Birthday Word Generator, linked to the date when OED researchers have been able to locate the first usage of a term. More...