There Might Be Something Human in the Way Bonobos Communicate—Their Calls Share a Key Trait With Our Language, Study Suggests
Researchers attempted to decode bonobo calls by recording their social context, then analyzed how the primates string together these vocalizations
Humpback Whale Song Shares a Key Pattern With Human Language That Might Make It Easier for the Animals to Learn
Despite humans and whales being separated by millions of years of evolution, our vocalizations follow the same principle outlined in Zipf’s law
Officials Are Offering $1 Million to Anyone Who Can Decode This Ancient Script
The enigmatic Indus Valley civilization left behind a script that today’s historians haven’t yet deciphered. While amateur theories abound, scholars are increasingly relying on computer science to crack the code
Ten Top Smithsonian Stories of 2024, From a Mysterious Underground Chamber to Dazzling Auroras
The magazine’s most-read articles of the year included a close-up look at the adorable yet venomous pygmy slow loris, a profile of a little-known 20th-century street photographer and a majestic journey with divers into Mexico’s underwater caves
‘Polarization’ Is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2024
The winning word beat out finalists such as “demure,” “pander,” “totality,” “fortnight,” “allision” and “democracy”
‘Brain Rot,’ the Scourge of the Chronically Online, Becomes Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year
The term refers to “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” that’s linked to spending extensive stretches of time scrolling through low-quality content
‘Demure’ Is Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2024
The term’s popularity skyrocketed after content creator Jools Lebron used it in a now-viral TikTok video, in which she described being “very demure, very mindful”
Archaeologists Say These Mysterious Markings Could Be the World’s Oldest Known Alphabetic Writing
Found etched into clay cylinders in Syria, the strange symbols date to around 2400 B.C.E.—500 years before other known alphabetic scripts
How One Man Discovered the Obscure Origins of the Word ‘OK’
From Civil War biscuits to a Haitian port town, theories about the word’s beginnings abounded
How the Memory of a Song Reunited Two Women Separated by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
In 1990, scholars found a Sierra Leonean woman who remembered a nearly identical version of a tune passed down by a Georgia woman’s enslaved ancestors
A Brief History of the United States’ Accents and Dialects
Migration patterns, cultural ties, geographic regions and class differences all shape speaking patterns
‘Hallucinate’ Is Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2023
In the context of artificial intelligence, the word means “to produce false information” and “present it as if true”
‘Rizz’ Is Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year
The word means “style, charm or attractiveness” or “the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”
Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year Is ‘Authentic’
As technology’s ability to manipulate reality improves, we’re all searching for the truth
A Brief History of the Letter ‘X,’ From Algebra to X-Mas to Elon Musk
A math historian explores how “x” came to stand in for an unknown quantity
Dictionary.com Adds More Than 300 New Words
Additions like “digital nomad,” “anti-fat” and “liminal space” reflect the dynamic nature of the English language
Three Pioneering Scholars Who Died This Year
They believed that the stories of marginalized communities were worth chronicling
‘Goblin Mode’ Is Oxford’s 2022 Word of the Year
The term describes behavior that’s “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy”
‘Gaslighting’ Is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year
Searches for the term, defined as the “practice of grossly misleading someone,” skyrocketed in 2022
Two Hundred Years Ago, the Rosetta Stone Unlocked the Secrets of Ancient Egypt
French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs on September 27, 1822
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