Moist. Mucus. Cyst. These are just a few examples of words people hate to hear. They make your skin crawl not only because of the gross visuals that come to mind, but also because of the way they ...

A swear word is like a linguistic punch in the nose. Virtually every language and culture has them—and virtually every language and culture formally disapproves of them. But that doesn’t stop them ...

We’ve all experienced how certain sounds can grate on our nerves, such as the noise made by dragging your fingernails across a blackboard (Getty/iStock) During the pandemic, many of us have felt our ...

Splish-splash, boing, bang, thud, sparkle, and pitter-patter are all fun words to say — they also happen to sound exactly like their definition. A study published recently in the Journal of ...

Ideophones, or words that sound like what they mean—words whose sound evokes the sensory experience they describe, like swish or twinkle—are easier to learn than other words, a new study finds. The ...

When we have conscious thoughts, we can often hear a voice inside our heads – now new research is revealing why. Why do we include the sounds of words in our thoughts when we think without speaking?

In a new study, researchers were able to see where in the brain, and how quickly -- in milliseconds -- the brain's neurons transition from processing the sound of speech to processing the ...

In a study that shatters a cornerstone concept in linguistics, an analysis of nearly two-thirds of the world's languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no ...

Researchers are a bit closer to understanding one of the brain's greatest accomplishments: making sense out of spoken language. An area of the brain that interprets speech contains cells that respond ...