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The English language is forever changing. New words appear; old ones fall out of use or alter their meanings. Over the past 20 years, World Wide Words has tried to record at least a part of this shifting wordscape by featuring new words, word histories, books on language, words in the news, and the curiosities of native English speech.

There are more than 3,000 articles here. They should give you as many hours of browsing as you could wish. Consult the index or try the search function (both available from the menu on every page). There are many more articles on another site, my Dictionary of Affixes, in which I define and describe the many prefixes and suffixes of English.

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Copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–. All rights reserved.

Last updated 03 Feb 2024