Ben Yagoda, an American author and retired professor of English, started writing a blog in 2011 that examined what he called "Not One-Off Britishisms," or NOOBS: examples of British words and usages ...

Most people think of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary as a quintessentially British production, but if you pore carefully over the first edition, compiled between 1858 and 1928, you will find ...

Black Americans have long contributed to the ways in which the English language is used, and now a new research project aims to compile the first Oxford Dictionary of African American English.

Editors at the Oxford University Press are unveiling a shortlist of words that will be featured in a first-of-its-kind dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of African American English won’t hit shelves ...

It's also got scenery, history and a national anthem no one can sing. Those are just some of the things we celebrate, each time July 4 rolls around. But there's one thing we often forget about, as we ...

It’s a word we often think of when we mean “easy,” but its origins are anything but simple. “Cakewalk” dates back to “prize walks,” or dances performed by enslaved Africans on Southern plantations, in ...

In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various ...

Adding a word to the dictionary has long been a sign of mainstream legitimacy. And in the latest batch added to Dictionary.com, the online dictionary has included multiple African American Vernacular ...

It has recently come to my attention that I’m a British citizen. I had no idea. My father, from whom I got my last name and not much else, was born in London and spent the first three or so years of ...