A new paper posits that advanced alien civilizations may communicate through subtle flashes, like fireflies do on Earth. The ...

Here's today's Strands answers and hints. These clues will help you solve The New York Times' popular puzzle game, Strands, ...

There are some names that don't fit into those categories and are more one-off references. The Gestral Ono Puncho is a ...

An assortment of absurd, useful and funny words and phrases entered the vernacular this year. How well do you know them? By Miya Lee and Kendall Blomfield By the end of 2024, words like slop, brat, ...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is offering to pay illegal aliens $3,000 and provide a free plane ticket out of the U.S. if they register by the end of the year for self-deportation on the ...

Searching for the path forward after their defeats last year, a contingent of Democrats has coalesced around the idea that the party’s road back to political relevance is to embrace “abundance” ...

Gail Flanagan received funding from the Research Ireland (formally the Irish Research Council) in 2021-2023 for PhD research unrelated to the current article. For us linguists, the flurry of “word of ...

Every year, teens quietly (and sometimes aggressively) update the English language while adults are still trying to figure out what “cheugy” means. In 2025, slang wasn’t just about sounding cool—it ...

Creepy, zany and demonstrably fake content is often called “slop.” The word’s proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence (AI), landed it ...