17th century

Words Born From Blunders

Discover the secret history of everyday words like 'nickname' and 'apron', which were born from simple mistakes. This post explores…

1 week ago

Bacon’s Cipher: The Binary of Typography

Imagine a secret message hidden not in the words you read, but in the very shape of the letters themselves.…

2 weeks ago

Lexical Encryption in Poetry

Poetry often feels like a message in a language we don’t speak, but what if that’s the point? Lexical encryption…

2 weeks ago

The Great Cipher of Louis XIV

For over 200 years, the secrets of France's Sun King, Louis XIV, were locked away in a fiendishly complex code…

2 weeks ago

The Future Subjunctive: A Fossil in Peru?

The future subjunctive, a verb tense dead in almost all spoken Spanish, is a ghost from the Golden Age. Yet,…

2 weeks ago

Chavacano: The Spanish Creole of Asia

Journey to the Philippines to discover Chavacano, a unique Spanish-based creole that blends the vocabulary of colonizers with the grammatical…

2 weeks ago

Is Quebec French *Really* French?

Many travelers, armed with their Parisian French, are surprised by the language they hear in Montreal or Quebec City. While…

2 weeks ago

The Birth of a Creole: The Case of Haitian Creole

How is a new language born? We trace the fascinating genesis of Haitian Creole, showing how elements of French vocabulary…

2 weeks ago

Why is ‘You Guys’ a Pronoun Now?

Ever wonder how 'you guys' became the go-to way to address a group, even a group of women? This phrase…

3 weeks ago

The Death of ‘Thou’: A Social Revolution

The disappearance of 'thou' from common usage wasn't just a linguistic spring-cleaning; it was a quiet revolution. This shift from…

3 weeks ago

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