Linguist Gareth Roberts joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the etymologies of English words. How did the first languages first form? Was there once a single common language ...

Aristotle called the artichoke a "cactus," but it wasn't a case of ancient Greek botany gone wrong. Back then, the word for an artichoke--or at least its closest relative, a kind of wild artichoke ...

One of my college history professors once claimed that the reason there is no English word that rhymes with orange is that it is one of the few words derived from Persian. He was only partly right; ...

"Lesbian" is a demonym for the inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos, so why does it today describe female homosexuality?

This story originally appeared on Mental Floss. Every two years we get to marvel at them — no, not the superhuman feats of strength and skill from the greatest athletes in the world, but the weird and ...

In the 1660s, Robert Hooke looked through a primitive microscope at a thinly cut piece of cork. He saw a series of walled boxes that reminded him of the tiny rooms, or cellula, occupied by monks.