In George Washington's days, there were no cameras. One's image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of Washington showed him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others ...

It's not just the quintessential corporate jargon word. "Synergy" goes back hundreds of years, with history in Christianity, ...

Etymology is the study of the origins of words and how their usage has changed over time. It's every bit the serious academic discipline you might expect it to be — except when it's not. As it turns ...

Where does the word “mother” come from? What does it mean? If, for some reason, you find yourself asking these questions, read on (and, as an aside, you might need to seek some professional help). For ...

Over the years, physicists have given names to the smallest constituents of our universe. This pantheon of particles has grown alongside progress in physics. Anointing a particle with a name is not ...

Brad Rappaport from Brooklyn writes: “Recently, I read in my dictionary that the origin of the word ‘religion’ lies in the Latin word ligare, to bind. I found this interesting, not only because of the ...

For many architects writing is an integral part of the design process, one that clarifies or pushes ideas into places sketches can't always reach. But for many, the origins of the words we use to ...

John Leland kicks off his entertaining new book, Hip: The History, with a seductive little linguistic anecdote. The word hip, he says, derives from the West African language Wolof, and was “cultivated ...