WordFixx

The suffix -ology is a Latin one, meaning a study or branch of knowledge. It's getting a bit abused these days, crammed onto non-Latin words to make things sound smart. I'm sorry, but they just bother me. It's like mixing apples and oranges.  Gemology - the study and certification of gems. Maybe they think it's cute, because it looks like geology. I don't know. Ufology - the study of UFOs. Sorry, that's just annoying. These words were invented just to make things sound scientific. I realize that the Latin roots can be a bit obscure, and might seem antiquated. But I can't just call myself a "wordologist" and force people to accept the word, can I? Only time will tell which words survive. There is an odd exception: "Tautology" is not a study at all. A tautology is a vacuous and obvious repetition, like "brilliant genius". It comes from "tauto-" (the same) and suggests a case study in monotony. It also

Every 4th year, February gets an extra day, the 29th. This gives us a calendar year that's 365-1/4 days long. But how exactly is it a "leap year" if we make the year longer? How is that leaping over anything? It's more of a drag year, because it drags on for an extra day. This is a good example of how priorities have changed. The reason it's called a leap year is ... because it makes fixed festival days "leap" ahead one day in the week. The term goes back to Middle English. By the way, this calendar we use is called the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII, who declared its use on Feb. 24, 1582. It replaced the older Julian calendar whose year was a little bit too long, and even skipped 10 days to try and get caught up. It's an interesting story. To be exact, our actual year is 365.242 days, and a leap year was defined as "every year divisible by 4 except for centenary years not divisible by 400", which does a good