If you have two dogs that share a toy, do you write that as my dogs’ toy or my dogs’s toy? It’s one of those things to which we can come up with a logical answer, but then later we’ll catch ourselves doing a different illogical thing. Possessive inflections on words ending in “S,” such as plurals, in English may look fine in text but sound odd to say. This is part of a complete episode.
When a British tabloid reporter writing about a crocodile attack needed a synonym for crocodile, he went with knobbly monster, now a joking term for similarly creative ways of avoiding repetition. Juliet and Matthew Maguire, described by The...
Sara in Camden, New Jersey, wants a word for those people who are more than acquaintances, but not quite friends. She calls them friendlies, but wonders if there’s a better term. Fracquaintance, maybe? The Danish band Mew has an album called...
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