We know that words change all the time and over time, a process language experts describe as “semantic shift,” semantics being the field of language concerned with meaning. Even if we may not ...

Traditionally the relation between philosophy and religion has been one either of identity, as in the early Middle Ages, or of hostility, as in the Age of Reason. In the eighteenth and nineteenth ...

The death of Joan Didion, the most profound essayist about language since George Orwell, comes at a time when one of her most astute observations — that words have meaning and consequences — is being ...

Earlier this month, a Chinese tech giant quietly dethroned Microsoft and Google in an ongoing competition in AI. The company was Baidu, China’s closest equivalent to Google, and the competition was ...

Here’s a test. Without looking them up on Google, try to guess the meanings of the foreign antonyms tobi and kekere. They are words in Yoruba, a widely spoken West African language that has its roots ...

When it comes to protest culture at UC Berkeley, I find myself playing the part of a fair-weather friend. I can only engage for so long until my emotions become numb, the chants lose their meaning and ...