Thinking it over, consistency is not such an issue, since begrimed is usually used as an adjective, rather than as a verb. I think it can justifiably remain as common. It can in fact be a seed word for a 7-by-many puzzle, though that hasn't happened yet.

The verb begrime, however, is indeed quite rarely used these days, so I'll make it rare. Begriming actually is already rare.

Jacki actually queried begrime as a common word in 2019 and was backed up by Morbius and Valerie. I seem to have missed out on logging that suggestion at the time. Sorry!

Having said that, I'm not so sure it ought to be changed. It certainly has an old world feel, but dictionaries don't label it as archaic or dated. And it is used in contemporary publications. For example, a Daily Mail article in 2022:

Earlier this week, Zelensky saw for himself the aftermath of Bucha. Photographs showed his begrimed face etched with horror.

And an article last year in news.com.au:

Begrimed with engine grease, his colleagues peer under the hood of an impossibly battered 1991 wagon...

And in a recent Washington Post review of a Macbeth production starring Ralph Fiennes:

In a deracinated, begrimed landscape, a cluster of trees marks the only sign of life.

Of course, these examples are all using begrimed. Begrime and begriming are used much less often. But then, if I make begrime rare and leave begrimed as common, how long will it be before somebody complains about the inconsistency?

The issue of platypi is very similar to that of octopi, which was discussed back in 2016. In both cases the -puses plural is more frequently used, while dictionaries identify the -pi plural as non-standard or erroneous, or else don't mention it at all.

I was surprised to see that there are quite a few examples of platypi in the News on the Web corpus, but then discovered that the vast majority of these were from news reports in a regional paper chronicling the fortunes of a football team in western New South Wales (with a capital P of course).

Platypi will be treated as a rare word in future. Platypuses will continue to be recognized as a common word. In 2013 it was the seed word of a daily 10-letter puzzle.

There is one other common word ending in -pus which is sometimes pluralized with a -pi ending: campus. In this case, we have always classed campi as a rare word.

I will add passata as a rare word.

The story told by the chart that TRex links to, confirmed by other corpora, provides two reasons not to treat it as common. Firstly that the word's very rarely used in the US. And secondly, that it's only in the last few years that the word's come into fairly widespread use in the English language, so not everybody would have been exposed to the word, even in countries like Britain and Australia, where it's often mentioned in cooking shows, etc.

I have to say, the product hasn't yet been adopted in our household, where we go through many cans of Italian peeled tomatoes. Passata, I gather, is a smoother product, usually sold in a jar or bottle - more concentrated than peeled tomatoes, but less concentrated than tomato paste. Probably passata would be a godsend for making a sauce in a hurry, but I'm able to take my time, and allow the sauce to thicken through evaporation.

This issue has come up quite a few times before, jancsika.

I draw your attention to the Glute topic in 2007, the Glute/augered topic in 2009, the glutes topic in 2012, the glutes (again) topic in 2012 and the glutes - yet again! topic in 2018. Plus the occasional mention in threads dealing with other matters.

In 2013, responding to an argument that glutes should be disallowed as a plural, I summed up the situation as follows:

This suggestion was previously made by mkenuk in May 2012. That thread is here. So far, Morbius, you've kept to your statement in the original post: "I promise this is the last you'll hear from me on this subject!" I was sorely tempted to rely on that undertaking, and ignore the issue! However, you're not the only forumite with an interest in the subject, so I fear it will keep cropping up.

The word was first discussed way back in 2007, in this thread, started by anonsi. It was raised again in 2009, by pat, and I discussed it here. In the end, glute was added as a rare word, and glutes continued to be allowed - and in fact was re-classified from rare to common. The word has been mentioned in a few other discussions over the years.

As I see it, the options are:

• leave things as they are
• bar glutes, as a plural
• continue to allow both glute and glutes, but as rare words (i.e. put glutes back to rare)
• bar glutes, as a plural and make glute a common word

The second option, as urged by mkenuk and Morbius among others, is probably the most logical one. But the problem is that all that would be left in our word list is the singular glute, a rare word. Some people have firmly declared that glute/s is definitely a common word. As stated in a previous thread, my researches tend to confirm that glutes is common, but I would not feel too uncomfortable about treating it as a rare word. But that is probably because, as anonsi correctly surmised in the earlier discussion, I have never been a woman. And I strenuously avoid anything to do with exercise.

I'm tending to lean towards the last option. Although the singular word is used much less frequently than the plural, it's not in the same class as a word like doldrum, which is very rarely used. It probably wouldn't seem weird to say that glute is a common word because of its widespread use these days (mainly in the plural).

Any further thoughts?

Forumites responding to this had a variety of views, and ultimately I made no further changes to the word list, but Morbius's suggestion is still logged as an open issue.

I guess it's time for another round of comments!

I'm going to leave bifold as a rare word for two main reasons.

Firstly, it's often written with a hyphen. According to the News on the Web corpus, it's hyphenated more often than not in British and Australian publications. So some players might assume it's always written as bi-fold.

Secondly (and this one is a bit facetious) it fails in its main duty - of conveying a meaning - so how can it be considered a common word? Here is the Merriam-Webster definition:

designed to fold twice

But Wiktionary says:

A door, window, shutter, or divider consisting of two equal panels hinged together so that it opens by folding the panels against each other.

There follow some additional senses, for paper, wallets, etc, but all involving just one fold.

Collins has a bet each way. They offer a British English definition: "foldable in two places" and an American English variant: "capable of being folded into two parts, as with leaves that are hinged together".

Google image search shows "bifold" doors and windows with one fold and with two folds. Occasionally an array of several doors hinged together, concertina style, will be captioned as "bifold". It seems like the word really just means folding!

(I note that "bifold wallets" are almost always those with one fold. A wallet with three sections and two folds is likely to be called trifold. The word trifold is also used for brochures with two folds.)

Incidentally, the fashionable cachet of bifold doors may be fading. The Collins dictionary entry has a usage example from the Sunday Times in 2013: "Bifold, or folding/ sliding door systems, are very much the thing of the moment." But then another example, from the same paper the following year: "One final word of advice: for some, the bifold door is already dated."

I agree these three words should all be treated as rare.

The predominance of mausoleums over mausolea as the plural is much more pronounced in the iWeb corpus: 1377 to 97; and the News on the Web corpus: 1671 to 50. Admittedly, just after this suggestion was posted I saw mausolea in a quote from Mary Beard's latest book: "the ashes of most emperors and their families ended up in one of two huge mausolea". But as a famed scholar specializing in ancient Rome, it would be a surprise if she didn't use the Latin plural. It seems the vast majority of writers use mausoleums in preference to mausolea, and it's plausible that quite a few players might be unaware of the latter word.

In future these three words will be classed as rare.

As for laminar, as far as I can see the word is seldom used except in quite technical contexts. One slight exception - it seems Paul Keating, the Australian Prime Minister in the 1990s, used the phrase laminar flow on a couple of occasions in discussing employment. As recalled by Anne Summer in a 2018 article in the Age:

He referred to “that laminar flow from various parts of the community into employment, one of those laminations has to be from the long-term unemployed”.

Summers rightly described this as "a somewhat arcane form of political communication", though to be truly arcane he should have said laminae (the plural of lamina) rather than laminations.

I'll make laminar a rare word.