Gretchen McCulloch
Mental Floss
Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact Gretchen
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Past articles by Gretchen:
16 Old-School Internet Acronyms: How Many Can You Recognize?
How is language evolving on the Internet? In this series on internet linguistics, Gretchen McCulloch breaks down the latest innovations in online communication. → Read More
A Linguist Explains Emoji and What Language Death Actually Looks Like
The final column by The Toast's resident linguist discusses emoji and language death. → Read More
Two Linguists Explain Pseudo Old English in The Wake
In which Gretchen McCulloch, The Toast's resident linguist, teams up with medievalist and linguist Kate Wiles to discuss pseudo Old English in THE WAKE. → Read More
This year marks a new language shift in how English speakers use pronouns
It's become clear that our current pronoun palette is sadly lacking. Luckily, we already have a perfectly good option at the ready. → Read More
Smol: The New Social Media Word That's 'Small' But Cuter
How is language evolving on the internet? In this series on internet linguistics, Gretchen McCulloch breaks down the latest innovations in online communication. → Read More
15 Interesting Things You Can Do With Capital Letters
Capital letters aren't just for starting sentences. Here are 15 more interesting ways to make use of them. → Read More
Move over Shakespeare, teen girls are the real language disruptors
Young women's speech isn't just acceptable—it's revolutionary. To use a modern metaphor, girls are the Uber of language. → Read More
Move over Shakespeare, teen girls are the real language disruptors
Hate vocal fry? Bothered by the use of "like" and "just"? Think uptalk makes people sound less confident? If so, you may find yourself growing increasingly unpopular—there's a new wave of people pointing out that criticizing young women's speech is just old-fashioned sexism. I agree, but I think we can go even further: young women's... → Read More
Why Have People Started Asking Questions by Adding 'Y/Y'?
How is language evolving on the internet? In this series on internet linguistics, Gretchen McCulloch breaks down the latest innovations in online communication. → Read More
A Linguist Explains How We Write Sarcasm on the Internet
Gretchen McCulloch, The Toast's resident linguist, on the ways we signal sarcasm on the internet. → Read More
Is a Hashtag a Word? The Case of #BlackLivesMatter.
Well, I didn't manage to get an emoticon of the year vote added to the American Dialect Society's annual awards ceremony for the word nerd set (there’s always next year!), but we did end up with a new category that's almost as interesting: Most Notable Hashtag. The hashtag that won—and subsequently took... → Read More
Why We Should Declare an Emoticon of the Year
You've heard about the Words of the Year—Oxford's vape, Merriam-Webster's culture, and Dictionary.com's exposure, to name a few. And perhaps you're even eagerly awaiting the American Dialect Society's own WotY vote, which will take place this coming weekend (I'll be livetweeting from it!). But in 2014 we didn't just communicate with words—we also... → Read More
Did You Miss Any Great Language Writing This Year? Top Lexicon Valley Posts of 2014.
Did you miss any great language-related writing on the Lexicon Valley blog this year? Based on a combination of shares, views, and comments, here are the 10 posts on Lexicon Valley that readers liked best in 2014. For the sake of variety, I've only included one post per author, but... → Read More
Why Do Hawaiians say "Mele Kalikimaka" on Christmas?
"Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say / On a bright Hawaiian Christmas day" What makes Bing Crosby's classic Christmas tune (well, the other one anyway) so endearing? At least part of the appeal is "Mele Kalikimaka" itself, which sounds tantalizingly close to "Merry Christmas" and yet not quite the... → Read More
What’s the Word for Turkey in Turkish?
You've probably noticed that a certain seasonally appropriate bird and a country on the Mediterranean have strikingly similar names. Is this a coincidence or is there some deeper funny business going on? Let's start with the simple part: The word for turkey in Turkish is hindi. Wait, what? OK, so what’s the Hindi... → Read More
5 Poems With Fantastic Wordplay
All poetry involves a certain facility with words—and often rhymes and meter—but a few poems kick it up a notch and really make us re-think what you can even do with language. Here are five of my favorites that'll bend your mind. → Read More
A Better-Phrased Sentence Could Have Saved This Woman “From Her Marriage to Her Dog”
A recent letter to the editor from Ann Patchett is making the rounds on social media: I was grateful to see my book "This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage" mentioned in Paperback Row (Oct. 19). When highlighting a few of the essays in the collection, the review mentions topics ranging... → Read More
What Do You Call the Night Before Halloween?
If you're like the majority of Americans, you don't have a special term for the night before Halloween, and it may not even have occurred to you that anyone does. But for a substantial minority of people, around 25 percent of respondents to the Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes, the... → Read More
4 Features From Other Languages That We Wish English Had
If you were redesigning English, and you could make it do anything that any other language in the world does, what would you change? In the video below, YouTuber Tom Scott talks about four fantastic features in other languages that he wishes were found in English. → Read More
A Course on Understanding People in Ipswich: Is the Course in Ipswich, or the People?
ARTHUR: Actually, I think he might. MARTIN: No, Arthur, he won’t. ARTHUR: Hmm. The thing is, though, Skip, with all due respect, but what I’ve got that you haven’t is that Mum sent me on a course on understanding people in Ipswich. MARTIN (slowly): And if I ever want the... → Read More