Language Commentary in The Boston Globe
From 2011 to 2013, Ben Zimmer wrote “The Word” column for The Boston Globe Ideas section every other week.
How to Talk Like Whitey Bulger (June 23, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Mobster lingo gets its day in court.
Why We Love ‘Cronuts’ (June 9, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
The devilish pull of the food portmanteau.
How Do You Pronounce ‘Cicada’? (May 26, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
A pronunciation crisis on a 17-year cycle—and how it got that way.
“Boston Strong,” the Phrase That Rallied a City (May 12, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
How’d we find a unifying phrase so fast? It’s been evolving for years.
At This Year’s Spelling Bee, Make Way for Meaning (Apr. 28, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Why is spelling showbiz while vocabulary is homework?
Why ‘Surreal’ Took Over (Apr. 21, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
The words we turn to when we try to describe the indescribable.
Boston Driving: So Bad It Needs Its Own Lingo? (Apr. 7, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Terrible road maneuvers, from the Boston left to the California roll.
Providence’s $5 Million Plan to Shrink the “Word Gap” (Mar. 24, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Can a city boost achievement by recording, and changing, how parents talk to kids?
The Original Scalawag (Mar. 10, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
A young word sleuth’s ancestor was being insulted before the insult was in the dictionary.
Besides the Pope, Who Speaks Latin Today? (Feb. 24, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
A visit to a living Latin conference uncovers scholars, teachers, journalists, religious figures, and even young students who are keeping an ancient tongue alive.
When Physicists Do Linguistics (Feb. 10, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Is English ‘cooling’? A scientific paper gets the cold shoulder.
Catfish: How Manti Te’o’s Imaginary Romance Got Its Name (Jan. 27, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Why we turn to stories to label strange human deceptions.
All the President’s Words (Jan. 20, 2013) [boston.com, gif]
Whatever happened to our neologizers-in-chief?
How to Talk Like a Doomsday Prepper (Dec. 30, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
Useful jargon for the zombie apocalypse.
And 2012’s Word of the Year Is… (Dec. 16, 2012) [gif]
Presenting the fast, fun, and careless coinages of 2012.
How Tony Kushner Made Lincoln Talk (Dec. 2, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
The movie’s vivid 19th-century dialogue is an achievement of its own.
Jacques Barzun, Protector of English (Nov. 25, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
Right up to his death at 104, the historian fought to preserve the language he loved.
How Twitter Language Reveals Your Gender — or Your Friends’ (Nov. 4, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
Social media is giving linguists new insight into how speech varies.
Now, Speaking for Romney (or Obama) (Oct. 21, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
What’s behind the rise of the ‘surrogate.’
Who You Calling a Moocher? (Oct. 7, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
How an old-timey slur became the rage in 2012.
Dear Apple: Stop the Funnification! (Sept. 23, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
Advertisers love coining words nearly as much as critics love skewering them.
How Sam, Mike, and Will Became Football Positions (Sept. 9, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
The logic of the game’s strange new nicknames.
What is YOLO? Only Teenagers Know for Sure (Aug. 26, 2012) [gif]
A youthful slang craze flies under the adult radar.
Crowdsourcing the Dictionary (Aug. 12, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
A publisher turns to the masses for new words.
How Did ‘Monday’ Become a Racist Slur? (July 29, 2012) [gif]
A Leominster police officer’s coded insult opens up a world of regular words used for ill.
Higgs Boson Metaphors as Clear as Molasses (July 14, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
The pleasures and limits of analogy in science.
Where Did the Supreme Court Get Its ‘Parade of Horribles’? (July 1, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
How an obscure Fourth of July custom from New England spawned a legal-world insult.
The Fight Over Defining Marriage, Literally (June 10, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
Can you change the world by changing the dictionary?
Whassup, Citizens! (June 3, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
The new, overly friendly political speech.
A Golden Age of Proverbs (May 20, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
The modern era offers its own wise catchphrases.
Dude, This Headline is So Meta (May 6, 2012) [boston.com, gif]
“Meta” has become a perfect meta-commentary on the consciously self-referential age we live in.
Supercalicontentious (Apr. 22, 2012) [gif]
Who coined the longest nonsense word in America? It’s a touchy subject.
Taking Back ‘Obamacare’ (Apr. 8, 2012) [gif]
Can the president make an insult into a selling point?
How Baseball Gave Us ‘Jazz’ (Mar. 25, 2012) [gif]
The surprising origins of a 100-year-old word.
Rise of the Crossword Robots (Mar. 11, 2012) [gif]
Computers vs. humans hits the next frontier.
The ‘Meh’ Generation (Feb. 26, 2012) [gif]
How an expression of apathy invaded America.
Linguistic Gotcha at ‘Downton Abbey’ (Feb. 12, 2012) [gif]
The Dowager Countess would never say that!
A Pahticulah Way of Talking (Jan. 29, 2012) [gif]
In a new book by Richard Bailey, 17th-century Massachusetts speech comes alive.
American Dialects from A to Z (Jan. 15, 2012) [gif]
A massive dictionary of regional language gets to ‘zydeco’—now what?
Twenty-What? Two Thousand Who? (Jan. 1, 2012) [gif]
Saying the new year out loud.
What We Talked About in 2011 (Dec. 18, 2011) [gif]
The year in language.
Is This the Last Print Dictionary? (Nov. 6, 2011) [gif]
An American Heritage for the digital age.
That’s Ridiculous (Oct. 23, 2011) [gif]
How the absurd became sublime.
Twitter’s Self-Deprecation Revolution (Sept. 24, 2011) [gif]
Hashtags are a sly new way to undermine what we say.
Ground Zero (Sept. 11, 2011) [gif]
Are these words tied to 9/11 forever?
Birth of the Nerd (Aug. 28, 2011) [gif]
The mysterious origins of a familiar character.
+1’tastic (July 31, 2011) [gif]
When a number becomes a word.
The 72-Word Door (June 19, 2011) [gif]
If dictionaries are tools for clarity, why is their writing so tortured?
Skadoosh! (June 29, 2008)
The story behind the word of the summer.