The stories behind our holiday words are gifts to all word lovers.

Move over ‘curd’ and ‘ointment.’ It appears ‘moist’ is the most hated word in America.

Ward’s lectures were designed not to inform but strictly to entertain and amuse his growing audiences, arguably making him the world’s first standup comedian.

“‘Delicatessen’ is a loanword, I think you call them,” said my friend Claus. “You know, words you Americans basically stole from us and use as your own.”

‘Onism’ is ‘the frustration of being stuck in just one body that inhabits only one place at a time, (and) the awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience.’

We answer the burning question bothering us — OK, me — since we were young schoolchildren: ‘Is Y a consonant or a vowel?’

The last letter of the alphabet has some first-rate qualities. What’s all the buzz? Read on.

The popular and versatile letter can stand for almost anything, or nothing, and be pronounced a host of ways, or not at all.

The letters H, J and W are often avoided when creating brand names because they’re difficult to pronounce in some languages.

The common Maine phrase “right out straight,” for example, was correctly identified as meaning “very busy” by only 5% of those asked nationally.