As a linguist, I’ve lost count of how many times I have been asked what I think of the various language-learning apps. The truth is that I don’t use them. But of late I have been watching my daughter, ...

A reader from Coimbatore has sent in this query: “Is it possible for a verb to function as an adjective? Please explain it with some examples.” An adjective is a word that describes (modifies) a noun.

‘The’ is the most commonly used word in English. ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ uses all 26 letters of the English alphabet and is called a pangram. Most average adult English speakers ...

Writers and language geeks inherit a ranking system of sorts: verbs good, adjectives bad, nouns sadly unavoidable. Verbs are action, verve! “I ate the day / Deliberately, that its tang / Might quicken ...

Before 2006, I never gave much thought to nominalizations — noun forms like “beauty” and “the scheduling” that at heart are really adjectives like “beautiful” or verbs like “to schedule.” I was ...

Nouns are by far the largest category of words in English. They signify all kinds of physical things both living and inanimate. They also signify imagined things like ‘a ghost’; and ideas or concepts, ...

A teacher of English has sent in this query: “The participles of certain verbs function as adjectives in sentences. Many students find it difficult to distinguish between the adjectival and verbal ...

The March issue of The Walrus, Canada’s leading general-interest magazine, features an ad for a speech by a blond, smiling young man named Eric Termuende. His talk is entitled “Connecting the Dots on ...