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I thought it was octopodes.

What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?
Why octopuses instead of 'octopi' 'octopodes' or 'dem theayr things'?

This comment alone summarizes your knowledge of what [sic] means.

How much is a billion?

If you are American, it is undoubtedly 1,000,000,000. This amount is known to traditionally minded British people as `a thousand million', and by some more adventurous ones as a 'milliard', though this word has not made as much headway in English as in some other European languages. A trillion is then 1,000,000,000,000, and so on.

If you are British, on the other hand, a billion may be 1,000,000,000,000 (a million million), following the older convention.

If you are neither British nor American, you can take your pick! (Both systems were invented by the French, but are called 'British' and 'American' for convenience.)

Once the business world and the financial press found themselves discussing `thousand millions' so much, the 'American' system simply became more convenient, despite a certain lack of logical tidiness.

irregardless

adjective adverb informal regardless.

ORIGIN probably a blend of IRRESPECTIVE and REGARDLESS.

Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph - an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble.

spammer, noun, derivative of spamming, verb: to send irrelevant or inappropriate email messages indiscriminately to large numbers of users.

spammers, n. pl. lying thieving pig-licking toilet blockages with feet.

I don't know what shit-kicking town you were raised in, but in my public school, Romeo and Juliet was required reading. It's not like Shakespear is the most quoted author or anything.

Wrong.

You might like to read this article from the Oxford Dictionaries people about learnt vs learned.

I am British and therefore tend to lean towards learnt rather than learned. But since you started a slanging match about use of language perhaps you'd like to correct "english" to "English".

John.

A dupe bug would bring the economics of such a system crashing down.

Interestingly, the article's authors came up with a solution to the problem of software bugs, though I don't think it was their intention:

- Farms/Forestry: Farms produce perishable food, wood, or textile items in predictable quantities that may vary with the weather. Farms may be damaged or destroyed by war, mismanagement or natural disasters.

Just imagine a "software bug" in the context of the original "bug": an insect that causes big trouble (think Biblically, as in plagues of locusts).

Someone hacks into the system and steals $5,000 of real-world l00t? Bad news for local farmers, a cloud of hungry grasshoppers devoured your fields yesterday. Estimated damages are g$1 million ($5,000 real-world).

Game designer conference... in Barbados? News flash: last night's thunderstorms spawned an F5 tornado that tore through the center of Avatarville. No PKs, but damage is estimated in the g$Millions.

[FBI | SEC | DEA] investigation? We're sorry, but a record-shattering earthquake destroyed all your possessions, the bank where your money was kept, and by the way, You Are Dead.

As for myself, if I wanted that level of uncontrollable risk, I'd play Real Life.

IANAL (...linguist)

But, a quick search on dictionary.com for the word 'mail' shows that there is some evidence for the word having its origins in Old French. Whether this applies for the postal usage (versus in the context of armour for instance) I don't know. Any actual linguists have any more info on this?

This article states that
"Some words inevitably crossed national borders - l'Académie française failed to impose the word courriel as an alternative to email or mail (the Frenchified spelling mél is sometimes used)."

I can understand why the French don't like the English words creeping into their language (e.g. le parking, le weekend), but these words aren't replacing French words, they are used for new concepts. If the French want to get a chance to use French words for new things, then perhaps they should invent some new things of their own.

P.S.

Ah say, ah say, ah say - mah dog 'az no nose!
'Ow does he smell?
'e smells of garlic, and 'e eats onions and ah let 'im shit in ze street!

*Ba-dum-tsssh!*

Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%

I tried to find a word count for French vs. English lexicons, but unfortunately after about 15 googlings I came to the concensus that you can't count how big a lexicon is, only the number of words in a dictionary. I remember a high school teacher telling me that there are about 100,000 words in the French lexicon, though. English is a magnitude larger, and impossible to give a straight answer- do you include technical words? medical words? colloquial words?

Lately I've been seeing an increase in apostrophe usage pedants on slashdot. The thing is, I can't understand where they're coming from: in forming the plural of abbreviations it is perfectly acceptable to use the apostrophe. I get this from http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsp elling/pizza. (I admit that using an apostrophe to pluralize abbreviations that do not contain internal punctuation is not the preferred way to do it, but is still acceptable)

Now as for the use of an apostrophe in "Dell's" and "Mac's", that has a point. But please, let's keep our grammar pedantry in check; there's no need to whine about "G5's" or "TP's". After all, there are certainly enough posts that still confuse "you're" and "your" or "its" and "it's"; surely those provide much more fertile ground for grammar complaints.

1. 1 To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially:
2. 
   a. To capture physically; seize: take an enemy fortress.
   b. To seize with authority; confiscate.

If I capture, seize, or confiscate your property, I have control and possession of your property while you lose it. That is the point you cannot see. If I don't take, or remove your property there is no theft. There might be copyright infringment, forgery or plagerism, but there is no theft without a transfer of possession.

But if that's not good enough for you, perhapse you'd like a few more. While you're noting the complete absence of any copying of so called "intellectual property" from any of those, check out how many specifically say "taking and removing". Thats because theft is concrete. I've either stolen your car from your garage or I haven't. I've either removed some stereos after breaking into Radio Shack or I haven't. That doesn't apply to downloading a copy of Office XP without paying for it, because there is no guarantee that I would have bought it in the first place. And even if it was guaranteed, MS has only "lo

1. 1 To get into one's possession by force, skill, or artifice, especially:
2. 
   a. To capture physically; seize: take an enemy fortress.
   b. To seize with authority; confiscate.

If I capture, seize, or confiscate your property, I have control and possession of your property while you lose it. That is the point you cannot see. If I don't take, or remove your property there is no theft. There might be copyright infringment, forgery or plagerism, but there is no theft without a transfer of possession.

But if that's not good enough for you, perhapse you'd like a few more. While you're noting the complete absence of any copying of so called "intellectual property" from any of those, check out how many specifically say "taking and removing". Thats because theft is concrete. I've either stolen your car from your garage or I haven't. I've either removed some stereos after breaking into Radio Shack or I haven't. That doesn't apply to downloading a copy of Office XP without paying for it, because there is no guarantee that I would have bought it in the first place. And even if it was guaranteed, MS has only "lo

Call me a skeptic, but I think it takes longer than 42 days (and the limited audience of blogs) to coin the meaning of a new term.

Well, there's an interesting legend about the origin of the word "quiz"...

It doesn't mention the by-products of burning biodiesel, but I would think more sources of diesel-like fuel is one of the LAST things we need.

Environmental damage and pollution from livestock is a very serious problem and probably the main reason I'm "pescatarian".
But I'm far from convinced that this process of converting the waste into fuel and burning it like diesel isn't just an equal-but-different evil, or worse. A far better option would be to treat industrialized meat as the sister-evil to SUV's. AKA Ridiculous Consumption in the vast majority of cases.

Are you anal because your head is up your ass? Learn the rules of grammar (see rule 2) before you stick your foot in your mouth.

i[sic] wonder why you didnt[sic] had[sic] pick up the british dictionaire[sic]?

"2 usually spherical object used in game,"does not require a 'ball' to be spherical, merely that it be used in a game. The non-spherical balls used the the games the US and Canada each call football fit this definition.

Also from the OED, the definition of footballagain is consistent with the games North Americans call football, given the above definition of ball: "1 large inflated usually leather ball. 2 team game played with this."

To what 900 year old English dictionary do you refer? The Oxford English Dictionary, which is the generally accepted UK dictionary, began to be compiled in 1857 and a complete edition was not published until 1928. There were previous British dictionaries, notably Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, but I do not believe any exist which were written 900 years ago, and if they did, consulting them for modern definitions would be ridiculous.

i[sic] wonder why you didnt[sic] had[sic] pick up the british dictionaire[sic]?

"2 usually spherical object used in game,"does not require a 'ball' to be spherical, merely that it be used in a game. The non-spherical balls used the the games the US and Canada each call football fit this definition.

Also from the OED, the definition of footballagain is consistent with the games North Americans call football, given the above definition of ball: "1 large inflated usually leather ball. 2 team game played with this."

To what 900 year old English dictionary do you refer? The Oxford English Dictionary, which is the generally accepted UK dictionary, began to be compiled in 1857 and a complete edition was not published until 1928. There were previous British dictionaries, notably Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, but I do not believe any exist which were written 900 years ago, and if they did, consulting them for modern definitions would be ridiculous.

According to the Oxford Dictionaries team, an apostrophe in this particular case is acceptable, although 1900s is preferable.

Also, 'c.' is the usual abbreviation of 'circa'.

So, in order of preference:

• c. 1900s
• circa 1900s
• c. 1900's
• circa 1900s

Ack! Stop with the rotten fruit already!

>Though I have to wonder sometimes if he just used
>to make a lot of words up :-)

Methinks he invented quite a few. (e.g. critical, monumental, obscene, majestic)