Linguists have noticed that many swear words share the same sharp, punchy sounds—hard consonants like “k,” “t,” and “g” that burst out of the mouth rather than flow. When a study examined those sound ...

Made-up words like “clisious” and “smanious” are easier to remember when they sound beautiful. Could the feel of a word shape how we learn languages, sell products and even how languages evolve?

Armed with a new list of words and using the power of social media, a new study has found that by the age of 20, a native English-speaking American knows 42,000 dictionary words. How many words do we ...