Nuts and Bolts: logomachy.

'Greengrocers, eh? Putting their apostrophes all over the place: potato's! I ask you!'

'Er...but surely potato's is correct? The apostrophe indicates that the penultimate letter of potatoes, the e, has been omitted.'

'So they're not just illiterate? Yeah, right.'

'I think I am, actually. You also see it with cauli's and tom's, other cases where parts of the words have been missed out.'

'And how come you think you're an expert on words all of a sudden? You're the sort of person who ends a sentence with a preposition!'

'Err...the word out at the end of my last sentence was part of the verb to miss out.'

'Ha! I like that: out isn't a preposition!' 

'Actually, I think you'll find it's marked as an adverb in the dictionary.'

'Oh yeah? And what do dictionaries know?'

Thing To Engage In Today: a logomachy. A logomachy is a dispute over words. It can also be a dispute which uses a lot - too many - words. The logo bit comes from the Greek logos, meaning word or speech; the machy part comes from the Greek word machesthai meaning to fight.

Have fun!

'Greek? It's Greek? Well, what do the Greeks know about English, that's what I want to know!'

'Well...'

'The next thing you'll be telling me that the word dictionary is Latin!'

'Um...'

'I mean, what did the Romans ever do for us?'