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Jez Burrows is the author of Dictionary Stories: more than 150 short fiction pieces, composed entirely from example sentences taken from 12 different dictionaries. Describing his writing process, Burrows comments: "It was only a few weeks into writing Dictionary Stories that I realized the dictionary is something of a Trojan horse. Trundling up to the perimeter of your bookshelves, it presents itself as a harmless book of reference-but look inside and you'll find it crawling with thousands upon thousands of microscopic pieces of fiction, all in the form of example sentences. Fiction is perhaps a slightly misleading word to use in this context. Lexicographers do not write these examples from scratch in the service of whimsical narrative; they query huge corpora of texts that could include novels, news broadcasts, articles and essays, and select an example that demonstrates the most probable usage of a word. But surrounded by the neutral, instructive language of dictionary definitions, example sentences feel vital and full of personality. The New Oxford American Dictionary contains over 80,000 examples, but it was just one ("He perched on the edge of the bed, a study in confusion and misery," an example of the word "study") that set me on the journey of collaging these sentences together to create very short stories. Should you wish to try writing stories of your own in this vein, I give you this list of some of the most versatile words the New Oxford American has to offer-or at least, words with the highest number of example sentences, any of which would make a fine start to a story." So, if you want to try emulating Burrows' style, here're the 6 words: 1. go, 2. run, 3. take, 4. set, 5. cut, and 6. stand. These words illustrate the linguistic concept of polysemy: words that possess many meanings. Try creating a story using one--or collaging several example sentences. Have fun!

What more can be said about Donald Trump's reported remark about "shithole countries"? Media outlets have by and large decided it was newsworthy enough to report without censoring, so we've been seeing and hearing the word shithole everywhere. More important than the word itself, of course, is the hateful sentiment behind it, as many commentators have pointed out. Trump's use of the word was in the service of a disparaging slur on countries, including Haiti and African nations, from which he thinks the U.S. should be limiting immigration. (Despite his vague protestations on Twitter, the White House pointedly did not deny that he dropped the S-bomb in front of a room full of lawmakers.) But shithole doesn't have to be used in such a vile way. In fact, despite its scatological origins, the word has something of a literary pedigree, which is worth appreciating as an antidote to the enervating news cycle.

Online translation services work for fewer than 100 of the world's 7,000 languages. However, now a new machine translation technique could change that by providing translations for thousands of other languages.

Children aged four and younger who speak two languages or are learning a second have more rapid improvements in inhibitory control, a study by the University of Oregon has said. Inhibitory control is the ability to stop a hasty reflexive response in behaviour or decision-making and use higher control to react in a more adaptive way. "Inhibitory control and executive function are important skills for academic success and positive health outcomes and well-being later in life," said Atika Khurana, the study's co-author and a professor in the Department of Counselling Psychology and Human Services and scientist at the UO's Prevention Science Institute. "The development of inhibitory control occurs rapidly during the preschool years," she said. "Children with strong inhibitory control are better able to pay attention, follow instructions and take turns. "This study shows one way in which environmental influences can impact the development of inhibitory control during younger years."

Article looks at the linguistic shift away from the older generation "you're welcome" to "no problem" or "no worries." The article notes that formal language is unquestionably falling by the wayside, likely due to the increasing use of digital technology. Instant messaging and texting have compelled many young people to forgo punctuation altogether, since receiving a message with a period or question mark at the end of it can induce anxiety for some. This is because punctuation is now considered "formal," which roughly translates to "serious."The same is true for "you're welcome," according to linguists, and it might explain why younger generations are using less formal phrases when someone thanks them. While some people might mistakenly think that doing so suggests that the service was irksome or inconvenient, the linguists cited in the article contribute this phenomenon largely to linguistic mirroring. This basically means if the people you interact with on a day-to-day basis often say "you're welcome" or "no problem," then you'll likely mirror whatever phrase is more frequently being used around you. "I believe that this is just part of the evolution of language," adds Saccardi. "The majority of speakers will not intellectualize the connotative meanings of their utterances. Rather, they are more likely to just use particular phrases instead of others because that's what they have grown into." Interestingly, the phrase "you're welcome" has acquired a new meaning for younger generations, as many use it sarcastically to point out that another person forgot to thank them, as in Maui's song in _Moana_.

The term 'eye dialect' was first coined in 1925 by George P. Krapp in The English Language in America (McArthur 1998). The term was used to describe the phenomenon of unconventional spelling used to reproduce colloquial usage. When one encounters such spellings "the convention violated is one of the eyes, and not of the ear". Furthermore, eye dialect would be used by writers "not to indicate a genuine difference in pronunciation, but the spelling is a friendly nudge to the reader, a knowing look which establishes a sympathetic sense of superiority between the author and reader as contrasted with the humble speaker of dialect". Mrs. Cowell's note: Contemporary writers of color now employ eye dialect to show disdain for the word that's misspelled, e.g. Cherokee writer Qwo-Li Driskill uses "AmeriKKKan" to underscore the racism and cultural genocide happening in a country that pays lip service to justice and equity.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine launched the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) in 1984 to help computers understand biomedical meaning as well as retrieve and integrate information from various electronic sources such as patient records and biomedical literature. From the set up of parameters for vocabulary sources, to the release of the UMLS "Metathesaurus," this article takes a look at how a vocabulary database tackled the most significant barrier to the application of computers in medicine, the lack of standard language in medicine.

This article explains to us why we favor, or think one language sounds "nicer", or "beautiful compared to others and how our brain reacts.

This comprehensive talks about what AI is and where it came from, along with the basics of why it has gained so much success lately. It explores how we can go about trusting this new technology, both in terms of tailored online services like ChatGPT and in terms of bigger machinery such as smart homes, self-driving cars, and more.