If you know a high school student interested in language and/or puzzles, tell 'em about the linguistics olympiads, there are lots of national versions in many countries plus an international competition!

If you're traveling this weekend, download this interview with @benzimmer.bsky.social! He has DELIGHTFUL stories about: — The origin of "hella" — Run DMC and "drop" — 1960s slang from cots in military barracks — Stephen Colbert & "truthiness" I promise you'll love it! 🎧 tinyurl.com/2d6qutrw

Don’t be sad it’s over. Be glad it happened. This post is about eggnog.

If you're traveling this weekend, download this interview with @benzimmer.bsky.social! He has DELIGHTFUL stories about: — The origin of "hella" — Run DMC and "drop" — 1960s slang from cots in military barracks — Stephen Colbert & "truthiness" I promise you'll love it! 🎧 tinyurl.com/2d6qutrw

Last year, my step-grandmother died from RSV she picked up at the family Christmas dinner. If you are sick, stay home. If the dinner is at your house and you are sick, cancel dinner.

Well, this was an exciting thing to wake up to this morning! I'm on a list of the best podcasts from women over 50 alongside a bunch of amazing women — Amy Poehler, Katie Couric, Michelle Obama, Kara Swisher, Gretchen Rubin, Mel Robbins, and more! www.theflowspace.com/lists/best-p...

Lynne always has the most complete list of words of the year from around the world!

A chatbot on a website just answered my question and solved my problem. It's a Christmas Miracle! (It was a super easy question. I had missed something obvious. But still ...)

Getting together with family is a GREAT time to talk about familects, the words and phrases only your family understands! "Why do we say ____?" You can also record them to share on the Grammar Girl podcast here: www.speakpipe.com/grammargirl I play stories every week, and people love them.

Getting together with family is a GREAT time to talk about familects, the words and phrases only your family understands! "Why do we say ____?" You can also record them to share on the Grammar Girl podcast here: www.speakpipe.com/grammargirl I play stories every week, and people love them.

I cannot stress enough how much PIs appreciate hand written notes from graduating mentees. I cherish each one, & many are hanging in my office. Related, if you left a while ago & have good news, we love to get emails from former mentees! Let us celebrate with you! Today I was lucky to get both 💜

Writing Christmas cards and feeling inadequate because I'm not doing anything personal or creative, but it's come down to "a plain card is better than nothing" time, and at least people will know I was thinking of them.

This week I joined Jess Zafarris @jesszafarris.bsky.social on the Grammar Girl podcast @grammargirl.bsky.social to talk about the 2025 words of the year! We explain each of the words chosen by different organizations this year and give our reactions. Have a listen at the links! ⬇️

Grammarpaloozians on Patreon and Subtext: Don't miss today's mini-crossword that goes with yesterday's podcast! To join and get crosswords, ad-free podcasts, and fun tidbits, use the following links for a free month at Patreon: —Order of the Aardvark ($5/month level): bit.ly/4pursW7 1/2

My words of the year for 2025. | ht @grammargirl.bsky.social @mashedradish.bsky.social @lanegreene.bsky.social @americandialect.org @akalhan.bsky.social @junecasagrande.bsky.social @merriam-webster.com @techdirt.com fritinancy.substack.com/p/words-of-t... #woty2025 #woty

Areas of Tukwila, Kent, and Renton are under GO NOW evacuation notice. (This is around where I grew up.)

I had missed that @jesszafarris.bsky.social‘s piece about “slop” is live. Great, as always. She has the history!

I'm relieved @merriam-webster.com chose "slop" as the word of the year! I recorded a WOTY episode Friday with @jesszafarris.bsky.social and @linguisticdiscovery.com, and M-W hadn't made its choice yet. But The Economist & Macquarie Dictionary had already chosen "slop," so it's in the show.

I haven't checked recently, but about four months ago, my local library had free COVID tests.

Check out Samuel Johnson's handwriting on this digitized piece from Houghton Library. It's swooshier than I would have expected! iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/vi...

Listening to Pink Floyd, drinking tea, and reading about rare books. 🥰

It is only today that I learned that yuppies is an acronym for “Young Urban Professional" and that it first emerged in 1980. I truly had no idea and that, my friends, is the magic of sharing a good word etymology at your next holiday party.

Our premiums are going up $1,500 per month.

Curious how the word you voted for measured up to others? Check out the results! It was a close race; “maplewashing” just narrowly beat out the popular runner-up, “elbows up,” 33.8% to 31.3%.

Attention northern word nerds: The very first Canadian Word of the Year is MAPLEWASHING!

When Stefan Fatsis wrote the definition for "sheeple" for @merriam-webster.com, it generated backlash — but not from who you'd think! @stefanfatsis.bsky.social told me all about it and more when we discussed his new book, "Unabridged." 🎧 APPLE: tinyurl.com/262fytb3 🎧 SPOTIFY: tinyurl.com/29p6qgnq

Happy Pluribus Day to all who celebrate.

Very sad to hear the news about John Varley. I didn't get to work with him much, but here's an amazing email he once sent us at Lightspeed about why he didn't like to read or discuss his own work. I've saved this for a long time because I enjoyed it so much.

📚 📚 📚 I'm super excited to finally be able to tell you about my new Patreon and how you can get an AMAZING list of 100 books my podcast guests recommended over the last year. As I was editing the list, I just want to move to an island and read for the rest of my life. 1/6

The thing about living on the west coast and working with people on the east coast is that I often wake up to fires. Which is to say, whew, I finally get to eat breakfast now.

"The new monolingual Irish dictionary changes this paradigm. Instead of asking 'What's the English for X?', speakers will now be empowered to ask 'What does X mean?' in their own language.”

Congratulations to all!

A brief return of the Murderbot Humble Bundle! The charity is still World Central Kitchen.

I'm interviewing Doug Harper soon — the creator of the Online Etymology Dictionary, affectionally known as Etymonline. Let me know if you have any questions for him! Any etymologies you've always wondered about or favorite stories you think more people should hear?

Ever wonder why the man in red has so many names? St. Nick, Santa Claus, Kris Kringle — it's a miracle Rudolph isn't confused. Santa Claus is his newest name. It comes from the Dutch Sinter Klaas, and first showed up in a late 1700s New York Gazette spelled as "St. A. Claus." tinyurl.com/275fsfq3

Have just been reminded that my friend Christina once overheard the following in Waitrose: it’s perfect. “Mummy, does Lego have a silent T on the end like Merlot?”

Nothing worse than signing an email "warm regards" and getting a reply with "warmest regards". Oh, now it's ON.

Trying out a new PCP's office, and their "preferred language" dropdown on the intake form is time-traveler inclusive.

"LLeMmings": compulsive users of large language models (ht @grammargirl.bsky.social) www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

This is great.

Have you noticed how many ads are stretching grammar lately? "Spread the happy," "Let's movie," "It feels good to Geico"? @byagoda.bsky.social tracked down 60+ examples of ads using anthimeria — words shifting to different parts of speech. www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/the... 1/2

@marthabarnette.bsky.social's book "Friends With Words" is packed with tidbits for word lovers, and in today's podcast we look at some of my favorites: — Why South Carolinians paint porches "haint blue" (to ward off ghosts) — What a "quidnunc" is (a nosy neighbor) 1/2 APPLE: tinyurl.com/2cwb4t92

Do you know of any good online book clubs?

Cutting it fine again...November's Separated by a Common Newsletter is up and out! Includes: pled or pleaded? British kids talking trash? Last words and words of the year. Plus links, links, links lynneguist.substack.com/p/pled-head

I think some of the greatest delights in the business of etymology are words—especially everyday words—whose origins we just don’t know. So, this year, I’ll do an etymological Advent calendar on this theme: words with origins that are obscure, uncertain, or otherwise unknown.

“Have Yourself A Merriam Little Christmas” Merriam, a career-oriented lexicographer from the city, returns to her small town for the holidays and meets Webster, a ruggedly handsome librarian, who shows her the true DEFINITION of Christmas.

Wow, I will pass 50K YouTube subscribers today! 😱 🎉 If you want to be among them, you can find me here: https:youtube.com/grammargirl I post quite a few Shorts there that I don't post anywhere else.

Thursday is National Cookie Day, which got me thinking about the difference between "cookie" and "biscuit" in US and UK English! What I'd call a cookie, my friends in the UK would often call a biscuit. 🎧 APPLE: bit.ly/48zkCaF 🎧 SPOTIFY: bit.ly/4pg2GsR

CONFIRMED: Oxford University Press has named ‘rage bait’ as the Oxford Word of the Year 2025. #OxfordWOTY