This Q&A is part of a weekly series of posts highlighting common questions encountered by technophiles and answered by users at Stack Exchange, a free, community-powered network of 90+ Q&A sites.

Linguists have long believed that the sound of a word reveals nothing about its meaning, with a few exceptions of words like “buzz” or “beep” that are known as onomatopoeia. But a new study analyzing ...

Every few weeks, I get another missive from a reader angry about the common use of certain nouns as verbs. The most frequent irritant is "to impact", which annoys conservatives, but people have also ...

Two Spanish psychologists and a German neurologist have recently shown that the brain that activates when a person learns a new noun is different from the part used when a verb is learnt. The ...

The conventional grammar wisdom is that turning verbs into nouns — or what is termed “nominalization” in linguistics — is bad for the health of one's prose. The evidence is painfully clear. Take this ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

"We have to turn the concept of gratitude from a noun into a verb." —Meerabelle Dey I like using more verbs and fewer nouns. It underscores the expression "that the name is not the thing.” Nouns and ...

Are you a “verb” person or a “noun” person? Does it matter? Knowing how you relate to the world around you does matter. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t critical whether you coordinate your ...