English And Luxury

How Far Back In Time Can You Understand English?

Colin Gorrie | Dead Language Society | 18th February 2026

Linguist crafts a blog post where the language gets older every few paragraphs, going back a thousand years. His voice changes to mimic a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler. Due mainly to unstandardised spelling, English is virtually unrecognisable if one goes back far enough. Read it and notice when you start to struggle with comprehension. How far did you get? (4,600 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Luxury’s Overexposure Is Biting

Matter | 23rd February 2026

Luxury is now ubiquitous on social platforms and popular media, and this has been bad for business. “Products are seen constantly; few care and even fewer buy. These displays of luxury are so excessive and so intense that, for the majority of aspirational consumers they have become nothing more than product porn. Excess and expense abound. But the products are interchangeable” (2,600 words)