I recently ran across an article in which someone wrote something like the following: For all you Googlers (is that a word?), there's an easy way to find the restaurant's website. "Is that a word?"—this is a common question. It's not a question expecting an answer, I think, so much as it is a rhetorical device indicating to the reader that the writer doesn't remember hearing others use that particular set of syllables in that way! But let me take a stab at answering anyway. "Googler" is a...

If the key to a word's meaning is its etymology, then pacifier and peacemaker should mean exactly the same thing. Paci- means "peace." "Fier" means "maker." Both are from Latin (pax and facere,* respectively). But as I always say, it's very important never to confuse what you put in your baby's mouth with what you send to conflict-ridden regions of the globe. A word's etymology may be helpful if we don't have better clues to its meaning. But all words, like sheep, have gone astray from their...