Enhance your vocabulary with our Word of the Day series. In this series, we introduce a new word every day and explore its ...

Odysseus: In Greek mythology, Odysseus is a character in The Iliad and the main protagonist of The Odyssey. Petros: Rock, ...

According to Country Life magazine last week, one of the telltale signs of 'the perfect gentleman' is knowing how to ...

The word began as a medical diagnosis but over the centuries has evolved to mean the longing for a bygone, idealized past.

Quarantine is a word that has become all too familiar in recent years, but its origins are centuries old. Stemming from the ...

The word Halloween seems like a good place to start. The Christian holiday All Saints' Day has been celebrated on Nov. 1 for over a thousand years. Another word for "saint" is "hallow" — as in ...

Think you’ve got a sharp language IQ? It’s time to prove it. This 27-question quiz will put your knowledge of word roots and etymology to the ultimate test. You’ll explore how languages like Latin, ...

Humanity has come a long way when it comes to crafty inventions, but some of the earliest innovative minds were the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greeks came up with several inventions that are still ...

If you have studied almost any European language, you will have noticed words that felt oddly familiar. French mort (dead) recalls English murder. German Hund (dog) is a dead ringer for hound. Czech ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

The death of Pope Francis on Monday means the Roman Catholic Church will soon begin the process of selecting a new pontiff. That ancient and mysterious undertaking known as the "conclave" invariably ...