historical linguistics

Holiday Etymology: It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

As language enthusiasts, we also think it’s fascinating to look at the etymology of the names for these celebrations — here are the origins of names for some common holiday celebrations throughout the world.

Soccer or Football? Beckham and Manning couldn’t solve it, so we did

If you’ve been watching the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, no doubt you can by now quote parts of the Frito Lays commercial featuring...

Mapping cross-linguistic similarities with Lexibank

Inspired by databases that store genetic information, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed Lexibank — a database that aims to help shed light on the world’s linguistic diversity and language evolution.