Q. I'm a copy editor for a weekly newspaper and I think you guys are fighting a losing battle regarding the words fund-raiser and Web site. More and more, we are seeing them spelled fundraiser and website.

A. By the time the next edition of the Collegiate Dictionary is put together, it's likely that website will have proved itself the dominant styling, and fundraiser may well, too. But it's not a "battle" we are waging for or against any particular form. We make a record of the language and when we were editing the Eleventh Edition of the Collegiate, the forms fund-raiser and Web site were more common based on the evidence we had garnered from print and electronic sources. But of course things change, language is dynamic, and so the forms entered in the dictionary are subject to change when we revise a dictionary for a new edition. For reasons of space, we do not show variants of compound terms even if such variants are themselves quite common.

Q. I would appreciate some insight into the etymology of shoo-in. I don't understand how it got such a counterintuitive meaning if you compare it with the meaning of the word from which it seems to come from: shoo.

A. The first evidence of shoo-in to mean "a certain and easy winner" appeared in 1937.

The word shoo started its life in English as an interjection. It was, and still is, used as an exclamation to frighten or drive away animals (such as barnyard hens) or other pests or intruders. Its first documented appearance in writing is from the 15th century, but it was probably used in spoken language for some time before it was written down.

Around 1620 shoo began to be used as a transitive verb, as in "He shooed the pigeons away from the bench." Later, the verb developed an intransitive use reflecting the result of shooing, as in "When she hollers at the cat, it shoos at once." Then around 1900 the verb began to be used figuratively in the field of horse racing. If a racehorse was allowed to win easily, it was said to have been shooed in.

A few years later, those devoted to racing jargon began to use shoo-in as a noun. At first it was used to mean "a predetermined or fixed race," and from that use it was extended to mean "a horse that is a certain winner." From that point, it was only a matter of time before shoo-in passed into the general vocabulary to mean anyone or anything that is a sure winner.

Q. When the chirpy waitresses at the Petaluma, California, restaurant I went to two days ago approach their customers, they ask, "How are we doing?" and "Did we like it?" Surely by now this has become an established use of the word: we = you.

A. The usage of we that you describe is certainly well established, though it does remain largely limited to informal speech and writing. Examples of this usage date back to the beginning of the 1700s.

This use of we was documented in Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934) and Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961), but has not been included in any edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Webster's Third defines this usage with a synonymous cross-reference to you:

YOU -- used coaxingly (as to a child) <we don't want to wake Daddy, do we> or encouragingly (as to a patient) <how are we feeling this morning> or in sarcasm <aren't we getting a little impudent>.

This use of we is often used to establish a sense of informality and familiarity between the speaker and the person being addressed. We will be examining this particular usage to see if it warrants inclusion in future revisions of our dictionary.