“Every word was coined by a resourceful individual or borrowed as a result of language contact in a certain place at a certain time,” writes Anatoly Liberman in his new book, “Word Origins and How We ...

One of my college history professors once claimed that the reason there is no English word that rhymes with orange is that it is one of the few words derived from Persian. He was only partly right; ...

In the 1660s, Robert Hooke looked through a primitive microscope at a thinly cut piece of cork. He saw a series of walled boxes that reminded him of the tiny rooms, or cellula, occupied by monks.