Englishish

I was pleased to learn this week that not only is "friend" a verb, but so is "defriend." It used to be "befriend," but I think that means something different and "debefriend" will never do. THis is much more exciting than knowing that "chill" is now an adjective, when we were previously stuck with chilly or chilled, neither of which mean anything like "chill."

You can always tell when someone has taken Latin when they say things like, as Phil Sheriden says in a column about the Eagles, "the people doing this are doofuses (doofi?)." I do the same thing. In some cases, like focuses and foci, both can be correct. It's more fun to do it with things that are clearly not Latin-based or only sound like they end with us, like tortoise and torti.