In 1924, the British Council celebrated its 90th anniversary. To celebrate, towards the end of that year the British Council listed 90 ‘influential words that have shaped our world from 1934 to 2024’. The British Council announced the list at Woke, edgelord, deepfake and doomscrolling part of 90 stand-out words for the British Council’s anniversary…… Continue reading 90 years of new words
Month: October 2025
Artificial intelligence in applied linguistics
The latest Annual Review of Applied Linguistics focuses on Artificial intelligence in applied linguistics. Artificial intelligence in applied linguistics: Applications, promises, and challenges, edited by Andrea Révész, Shungo Suzuki and Yeonwoo Jung, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Volume 45 (March 2025), is available free until 3 November 2025 at https://cup.org/4hGPOsV Contents: Identity and investment…… Continue reading Artificial intelligence in applied linguistics
Hind, a Red Deer or Sika, a female Red Deer or Sika
I mentioned recently the Feedback column in the Saturday edition of The Times. Another thing I discovered from that column on the same day was about the words for female, male and young deer. A pedantic reader had objected to a crossword that used “stag’s mate” as the clue for “doe”. Apparently, stag is used…… Continue reading Hind, a Red Deer or Sika, a female Red Deer or Sika
Where did Albanian borrow words from?
In this post, I look at 68 words that Albanian borrowed from other languages,. Most of the words were borrowed from other Indo-European languages. In a previous post, I mentioned 70 other words that Albanian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages. https://languagemiscellany.com/2025/09/where-did-albanian-words-come-from/ The information comes from the…… Continue reading Where did Albanian borrow words from?
Etymological dictionary of Old High German
I discovered an etymological dictionary of Old High German online at https://ewa.saw-leipzig.de/index/de Run by the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, it aims to establish the etymology of every Old High German word appearing in literary sources and glosses produced between about 750 E and 1150 CE. The latest volume online is Volume V11, covering…… Continue reading Etymological dictionary of Old High German
Singular folk—or is that plural
The excellent Feedback column in the Saturday edition of The Times (of London) often discusses language. On 4 October 2025, the column discussed complaints by disgruntled readers about the newspaper’s Polygon puzzle. This puzzle requires solvers to produce as many English words as possible from a list of 7 or 8 letters. Readers complained that…… Continue reading Singular folk—or is that plural
Reflexives and reciprocals in English and German
There are several differences between English and German in how reflexive pronouns (such as themselves) work. This post discusses one such difference: referring to plural nouns, the German reflexive pronoun sich can also have a reciprocal meaning. In contrast, English has to express the reciprocal meaning using a different pronoun: each other (or its equivalent…… Continue reading Reflexives and reciprocals in English and German
Happy Hangul day
I reminder that today (9 October) is Hangul day. Hangul is the name used in South Korea and most of the world for the writing system used in writing Korean. For more on Hangul, please see Hangul Day – Language Miscellany
Is the US government scrapping plain English?
The US government used to have a site PlainLanguage.gov dedicated to plain language. It seems the site has vanished, though a cut-down version still exists at Plain Language Guide Series – Digital.gov An archive of the old site still exists at https://web.archive.org/web/20250926194815/https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ For more on plain language, please see https://languagemiscellany.com/2023/06/iso-on-plain-language/ I’ve mentioned PlainLanguage.gov before at https://languagemiscellany.com/2025/07/trying-too-hard-to-avoid-the-passive/…… Continue reading Is the US government scrapping plain English?