Language experts agree that no single English language rule exists for terms like "farmers market," "couple's retreat" or ...

The lexicographer Kory Stamper’s new book, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, is an eloquent defense of a “live and let live” approach to English. Well, you know what they say about ...

The Anglo Saxons didn’t say ‘the’, they said ‘sê’ – as in pass me ‘sê’ bread. Nowhere in Old English grammar is there actually a precise ancestor for ‘the’. But some time over the 1100s it entered our ...

Ellen Jovin is not the grammar police. She's more like a grammar guru, a gentle, nonjudgmental guide who knows English isn't etched into a linguistic stone, rigid and unchangeable. Instead, she knows ...

Commentary: It never ceases to annoy me when people misuse the written word. English is a beautifully ugly language.

THE ancient notion of English grammar was one of certain categories of words, and certain rules for their proper use. This is still the idea implied in most of the dictionary definitions of the word.

The plaque commemorating pitcher Greg Maddux’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame this week testifies that he is the “only hurler with 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts and less than 1,000 walks.” If ...

The most commonly-used word in English might only have three letters – but it packs a punch. ‘The’. It’s omnipresent; we can’t imagine English without it. But it’s not much to look at. It isn’t ...