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?

There are two ways to appear smart—look it or sound it. Looking smart is OK, but if it ends when you open your mouth, how does that help you? There are many life hacks, but finding the perfect word in ...

Splish-splash, boing, bang, thud, sparkle, and pitter-patter are all fun words to say — they also happen to sound exactly like their definition. A study published recently in the Journal of ...

Repeating spoken words is a technique familiar to music buffs — the rhythm of the repetition feels like song. Now, scientists think they can explain why. It turns out it has to do with how our brains ...

Plato's dialogue Cratylus begins with a debate. Socrates is asked whether the sounds of words are simply arbitrary conventions, as Hermogenes suggests, or if sounds are reflective in some way of their ...

It has probably happened more than once at work: You wanted to sound smart, so you used a word you thought would impress people — but instead ended up looking like you had no idea what you were ...

The English language could have more words than most comparable world languages — and some of its greatest words don't get the airtime they deserve. "Mollycoddle," "jejune," and "bumfuzzle" are some ...

Certainly, you might find related words within a language that sound alike – think glance, glimmer and glare in English, which all have to do with vision and begin with a “gl.” But that doesn’t mean ...

The wind is up; a dry wind. Between four walls, we're only aware of its presence by the sounds it makes. Whistling, hissing, sometimes howling. The effect on the building is noticeable: creaks in the ...