The word, which is increasingly applied to nonphysical things, beat out others, including “gaslighting,” “incel” and “techlash.”

A painstaking investigation of Europe’s cave art has revealed 32 shapes and lines that crop up again and again and could be the world’s oldest code

Their desire for avoidance is a predisposition so common that it’s become hard-baked into Finnish culture.

Hannah Jenkins survived a cycling accident - but woke up no longer being able to understand English.

Scientists seek evidence for Neanderthal language from fossils, artifacts and DNA.

How much do you really need to say to put a sentence together?

When Jews fled Spain during the Inquisition, they carried their language with them. Today, Ladino reflects the trajectories of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, but can it survive?

By Emma Young. This is the first demonstration that language affects whether we consciously perceive a stimulus or not.

What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?

Despite centuries of efforts to make standardised French the language of all of France, Occitan, which is intrinsically tied to the local culture, could not be suppressed.

How a cheesy joke from the 1830s became the most widely spoken word in the world.

Practiced since as long as Hawaiians can remember, hoʻoponopono is necessary on an island where space and resources are limited and the community is key to survival.

Why one syllable spoken at different pitches can have seven meanings

With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say.

The ability to visualise an object associated with a sound was once thought to be unique to humans. But some birds seem to have that ability as well, a study has found.

A significant number of gestures made by chimps and bonobos mean the same thing.

Lithuanian, the most conservative of all Indo-European languages, is riddled with references to bees.

The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic script to the Latin-based style favoured by the West. What are the economics of such a change?

Collaborations among Egyptologists and digital linguistics promise global visualizations of what was written on inscriptions, papyri, wall paintings, and other sources of Hieroglyphs. It may also allow for more popular knowledge of Egyptian Hieroglyphs and encourage its assimilation into popular language-learning apps like Duolingo.

A partnership between Google and Australian linguistic researchers could see AI play a role in digitising and preserving dozens of threatened languages.

All over the country all but 20 of the 250 Indigenous languages are highly endangered or, as some describe, in a deep sleep. But now they are waking up thanks to the word detectives, a dedicated group of linguists and teachers determined to make language revival a success. Desmond Crump is one of them.

The Gorilla Foundation said Koko, the beloved western lowland gorilla that befriended Robin Williams and others, died in her sleep in Northern California.

Why you should use percentages, not words, to express probabilities.

Bahasa Indonesia was adopted to make communication easier across the vast Indonesian archipelago, but its simplicity has only created new barriers.

After Brexit, the use of English is likely to be even more common.

What if walkie-talkie people named everything? A stamp would be called a licky-sticky. A defibrillator would be a hearty-starty. A bumble bee is a fuzzy-buzzy, and a pregnancy test would be a baby, maybe. A bra is a breastie-nestie, and a fork is a stabby-grabby. A hippo is a floatie-bloatie, and a nightmare a screamy-dreamy.

For some 2,500 years, residents of this mountainous village have used an astonishing language that only they understand. But there are only six people left who can ‘speak’ it.

Dr Marcelo Montemurro from the University of Manchester and Dr Damian Zanette from the Centro Atómico Bariloche e Instituto Balseiro, Argentina, claim to have found linguistic patterns in the world’s most mysterious book, the Voynich manuscript.

Fast-accumulating data seem to indicate that our close cousins, the Neanderthals, were much more similar to us than imagined even a decade ago. But did they have anything like modern speech and language? And if so, what are the implications for understanding present-day linguistic diversity?

Doctors are looking into the mystery of an American man who awoke speaking only Swedish, with no memory of his past, after he was found unconscious four months ago at a motel in southern California. Michael Boatwright, 61, woke up with amnesia, calling himself Johan Ek, the Desert Sun reported.

Microsoft Research Asia says they have tested ways the Microsoft Kinect device could translate sign language and help individuals who are deaf communicate.

Language experts at the Oxford English Dictionary said the definition did not change overnight but they will monitor how the word marriage changes over the next year.

India has lost around 20% of its languages in the past five decades, a survey by the Vadodara-based Bhasha Research and Publication Centre has revealed.

Apple makes free texting convenient by bundling its own iMessage system with SMS. But there's a dark side.