A caller wonders if she’s being hypersensitive about the way her boss addresses her in emails. Can the use of an employee’s first name ever reflect a power differential? And: a community choir director wants a term for “the act of...
With its unusual combination of letters, the word etui is a favorite of crossword-puzzle constructors. Etui means “a small case” and often refers to containers for carrying small instruments such as sewing needles and pins. This word was...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...
In ancient Rome, kids played games with nuts — specifically walnuts. In a Latin poem from that era, “Nux,” a walnut tree describes some of those games. Nux is Latin for “nut,” the source also of nucleus, or “kernel of a...
Celia, from Spokane, Washington, is unhappy that fewer and fewer English speakers seem aware of the correct plurals of Latin and Greek words. She is bothered, for example, when someone refers to minimums rather than minima. Minima is more often a...
If you’re talking about the device used to control your computer’s cursor, is the plural computer mouse or computer mice? Either is correct, but the most common version is computer mice. In the early days of computers, engineers often...