Q. Newspapers are reporting that a 12-year old boy hit a walkoff (or walk-off as reported by another source) home run in America's win over Japan. I know what a lead off home run is, but not a walkoff.

A. A walkoff home run is one that occurs as the last play of a game, usually as the deciding play. The home run in that game was hit in the bottom of the last inning to break a tie score, so at that point the game was automatically over.

As far as we can tell, the word is almost exclusively used in contexts pertaining to baseball or softball, though it could possibly start to see usage in reference to other sports (a walkoff overtime goal, for instance).

This term is seeing increasing usage in sports publications, and although we have yet to enter it in our dictionary, we are continuing to monitor walkoff so that it may be considered for entry in a future edition.

Q. I'm French Canadian, and when someone in my history class was talking to me, I said "Stop talking. You're deconcentrating me." Everyone laughed and said "deconcentrate" isn't a word. What is the proper way to convey this idea in English?

A. Many words in English and French have overlapping spellings and meanings so it is natural to expect that if a word is used one way in a language, it is probably used in the same way in the other. It is also true that differences between the two languages abound, and a word that is correct in French will often sound awkward in English in the same context and vice versa.

In English deconcentrate means "decentralize." The French word is also used in this way, but it has another sense that the English word does not share, which is the sense that refers to not being able to concentrate. In English, the word "distract" is used, as in "Stop talking. You are distracting me." Another solution is to simply say, "Stop talking. I can't concentrate" and to express the idea by using a negative construction that requires several words instead of just one like the French word does.

Q. I have a long-standing question about the word organon. I believe the etymology of the word refers to Aristotle and a tome, but is it possible to apply this definition to a watch?

Does it not represent a physical embodiment of knowledge and philosophic principles? An investigation can be merely defined as an observation, so wouldn't looking to see what time it is (time potentially being a philosophic event) be a philosophic investigation?

A. Organon is frequently used as the collective title for the treatises of Aristotle although the word also appears in the works of other philosophers such as Johann Heinrich Lambert, whose principal philosophical work is titled New Organon or Thoughts on the Search for Truth and the Distinction between Error and Appearance (1764).

Our evidence for the word shows that it is most often used in philosophical or scientific contexts as the definition in our Online Dictionary indicates (the sense-divider specifically means that the part of the definition that reads "a body of principles of scientific or philosophic investigation" is the predominant meaning). Reflecting on the fact that the word organon shares its roots with the word organ can give us a clue as to its limitations: an organon is an instrument — or a set of ideas — connected to and controlled by the mind. It is not an instrument in the literal sense of an engineered and manufactured object.