DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: I was gobsmacked (a fun word too) to hear for the first time the word bafflegab, which means exactly what it sounds like. Unfortunately, there’s so much of it these days. –Cindy ...

‘Gruhious’ Was Harder to Remember Than ‘Clisious’ — Researchers Have Theories As To Why In A Nutshell The study tested made-up words, not actual profanity. Researchers created nonsense words using ...

Across dozens of languages, people associate the same sounds with the same shapes, according to new research. What can this tell us about how language first developed in humans? A new study found that ...

A swear word is like a linguistic punch in the nose. Virtually every language and culture has them—and virtually every language and culture formally disapproves of them. But that doesn’t stop them ...

What shape do you see when you hear “bouba”? What about “kiki”? It turns out that nonsense words that evoke certain shapes have something to say about the origins of language. If you're enjoying this ...

Wearing headsets, 18 subjects lay quietly while a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) droned on around their heads. They listened as a female voice recited a famous line from a ...