Q. You've got the wrong pronunciation for litotes. The accent should be on the antepenult (the third syllable from the end, counting backward). Obviously, none of you have ever studied Latin or Greek!

A. Many of us here have studied Latin and Greek. The Collegiate Dictionary, however, is a dictionary of English. The entry for litotes is not for a Greek word, but an English word with its roots in Ancient Greek. There are several pronunciation variants given for litotes. All are correct. The pronunciations with initial stress are well-established English pronunciations which date back centuries. The variant with penultimate stress is a more recent development, and was likely influenced by scholarly pronunciation of Ancient Greek.

Q. The confusion over the true definition of the word biweekly drives me crazy. One cannot know if, for example, a regular meeting will occur twice a week or once every two weeks.

I propose that Merriam-Webster eliminate the confusion and provide a single definition for the word. Please define biweekly to mean only "once every two weeks." We can no longer, as a society, tolerate the absurdity of a self-contradicting word such as biweekly.

A. Unfortunately, meanings are a lot like cats — they are very difficult to herd.

We only enter what the language tells us, and the language tells us of two distinct meanings, however maddening that may be in this case.

You are not the only person confused by words formed with bi-. It is one of the perennial subjects of usage commentary in English (along with others that present potentially confusing meanings such as the words hopefully and momentarily). What's key in writing or editing with such words is to provide enough context or clues to steer the reader to the intended meaning even if it requires rephrasing or rewording.

Here's the usage note found in the Collegiate at the prefix bi-:

Many people are puzzled about bimonthly and biweekly, which are often ambiguous because they are formed from both senses 1b and 2b of bi-. This ambiguity has been in existence for nearly a century and a half and cannot be eliminated by the dictionary. The chief difficulty is that many users of these words assume that others know exactly what they mean, and they do not bother to make their context clear. So if you need bimonthly or biweekly, you should leave some clues in your context to the sense of bi- you mean. And if you need the meaning "twice a," you can substitute semi- for bi-. Biannual and biennial are usually differentiated.

Q. The etymology given for the word slang is "origin unknown." Doesn't it stand to reason that it's simply a blending of the words secret and language? Seems logical enough to me.

A. The chances that slang is an acronym from "secret language" are very slight. Short words of obscure origin are often popularly explained as acronyms, such as cop from "constable on patrol" or posh from "port out, starboard home." The great majority of such etymologies are either demonstrably wrong, or, as in the case of slang, not subject to verification because of lack of evidence.

The fact is that few words not of an institutional or bureaucratic character are consciously coined as acronyms, and the few that are, such as snafu, are imitations of bureaucratic coinages. Words such as snafu can seldom be dated before World War II, when the acronym as a word formation device became common. The word slang, which dates from about the mid-18th century, is much older.