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Grammar girl here, I'm Minion Foggedy.

This week, I have a quick and dirty tip about the difference between a cannon with two

ends and a cannon with one end, and a meaty middle about the 2017 words of the year.

But first, we have to talk about the word Eskimo.

Back in late November, I debunked a myth about Eskimo's having lots of words for snow,

and the cliche follows a format like this.

If Eskimos have 100 words for snow, then people from somewhere else surely have 100 words

for whatever's common in their area.

Like if Eskimos have 100 words for snow, then surely Seattleites have 100 words for rain.

Because that's how the cliche is always phrased, I had to use the word Eskimo, and I did

talk about how there's no Eskimo language.

But I left out that Eskimo is also an extremely troublesome word all by itself.

Because frankly, I didn't know.

I read books and original linguistics articles to put together the piece because it was complicated,

and I was trying to really focus on getting the language part right, and I checked the

AP style book, but I never came across anything about how offensive Eskimo can be.

Also, this clarification and apology was supposed to come out the week after the show,

but I was traveling and some of the files got deleted off the server and nobody noticed

while I was away, so it didn't get released when it should have.

Therefore I'm doubly sorry, both that I had a huge blind spot about the word, and that

this didn't come out in a timely manner.

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