Whenever someone asks me if something is one word or two — something like, for example, that restraint you’re required by law to buckle into place when you get in a car — I have a relatively ...

To explain — and this one needs a bit of explanation — the lexicographers at Oxford pick a word of the year every year for reasons that escape me and this year the word for 2024 is brain rot.

In a word: Compounds: when two words beat as one While 'nobody' is one word, 'no one' consists of two. (Besides, no one should ever write 'noone' because, well, it looks like it must be the ...