Writers and language geeks inherit a ranking system of sorts: verbs good, adjectives bad, nouns sadly unavoidable. Verbs are action, verve! “I ate the day / Deliberately, that its tang / Might quicken ...

The couple is going to purchase the house? Or the couple are going to purchase the house? Even after all my years of editing, I can still get tripped up trying to make verbs agree with collective ...

The word ‘plural’ comes from the Old French ‘plurel’ which means ‘more than one’. A noun is a word used to identify something.There are a lot of nouns.There are many patterns to look out for when you ...

We have two new entries here, both present participles of verbs that might or might not exist. First is “efforting.” YourDictionary.com has one of the few online definitions, which consists entirely ...

With the advent of social media, words, rather nouns like 'inbox' and 'bookmark' are now being used as verbs. Read on for more such gems... The English language is constantly evolving, reason why many ...

As a linguist, I’ve lost count of how many times I have been asked what I think of the various language-learning apps. The truth is that I don’t use them. But of late I have been watching my daughter, ...

All nouns in Spanish have a gender. They are either masculine or they are feminine. Every noun is either one or the other and you just have to learn them. But there are some clues. Un problema is a ...

Variously idiosyncratic, intriguing and often unerringly apt in their descriptions of gatherings of birds, animals and people a damning of jurors, an incredulity of cuckolds — most of the collective ...