From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWater, happy new year, and let's just go right into it.

It's something that irritates a lot of you, and you know, to a tiny extent.

Me too, but when it irritates you, what you want to do is trace it and face it and not.

It erase it, but explain it. I can't make that rhyme.

But what I'm talking about is this. You've got a crisis.

All right. And boy, do we? This week, well, crisis, crises.

That's the technical plural. I don't use it. I say crisis, but you can say crises.

Analysis, well, if they're two of them, then analyses. Okay.

Genesis, genesis, parenthesis. I think a lot of us are a little insecure about it because,

you know, when do you talk about one of them? But I think we know intellectually it's a parenthesis,

but if you have more than one parenthesis, well, then parenthesis.

Elypsis, if you are given to talk about such things, well, ellipses. Okay.

So you've got those weird plurals that you pick up, you know, probably some time around college,

but there's something that one hears a lot. I doubt if it's new, but one does hear it a lot.

Processes. So you would think that it's processes, but a lot of people talk about, well,

we're going to have to rethink these processes because, and that irritates a lot of you in whatever

voice it's set in. And you know, frankly, on this show, I'm always talking about how there is no

such thing in the scientific sense as improper language, unsuitable language, language that isn't

basically effective at getting the message across. And that's true, but that doesn't mean that I'm

not a human being. And there are little things that bother me just like we don't all like coconut.

I don't for the record. A lot of people seem to think of coconut as quite delicious. It irritates me.

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