Getting back to the original subject, biro is obviously yet another of those regional terms.

In Australia - and I imagine the situation is the same in the UK - the word is in extremely common use. It is the word most people would use informally for a ballpoint pen, if not for any kind of pen at all. And not only informally, for that matter - you can find examples on the Internet of government forms directing you to complete all sections and use a black or blue biro.

And who could forget Biro Marx, brother to Groucho, Chico and Harpo?

However, it seems the word is not used in this way in the US, so I think it should be reclassified as rare. (Unless the Biro company wants to make me a tempting offer...)

Many, many posts ago, some issues were raised in this thread concerning forum behaviour.

Even further back, some issues were raised concerning "Why 'Levis' and not 'Lego'?" - that is, the ostensible topic of the thread.

The way the chatter has drifted is a typical symptom, to me, of the way the forum becomes less accessible to new-comers. What do I do now if I want to say something else about levis? Just append my post? If I do, how many people will actually see it? Any casual visitor intrigued by the subject line would probably get bored long before reaching the end, and would assume that there's nothing more going to be said about the original question.

Linda, it's not a question of what I want. It's a question of whether the forum is as effective as it could be as a forum - that is, as a place where many people will come to share their thoughts. I have my opinions about this, which I've expressed. I may be wrong.

Threeb, I wasn't raising any issue about the language being used. I'm not sure what you're referring to there - maybe some people deleted some of their posts after RM's complaint. When I came along and saw RM's comment, several hours after she had posted it, I assumed she was referring to the way the thread had gone completely off-topic, and that there was a lot of hag-related badinage that would mean nothing to somebody who hadn't spent an hour a day reading this forum for the past few weeks. Those were the issues I had in mind when I said I'd given up trying to persuade people to change.

This could have turned into a very interesting conversation about when trademarked names become common in the language.  Instead, you lot are spreading your hag slime all over it and just about every other thread in this forum.  Yukk!  And you wonder why more people don't participate in the forum, or why some people don't participate more.  It's disgusting!

Good point, RM - although expressed in sharper terms than I would ever have dared.

But I fear you're pursuing a lost cause. I have, some time ago, put the argument that the forum must be very off-putting for newcomers because every thread is liable to be full of random badinage, in-jokes and secret language. But nobody seems to have changed their posting behaviour, and I don't suppose they ever will.

Thanks for that information, birdy - now that I know what to look for, I can see lots of Web pages about paper quilling, many of them using quiller for someone who practices that craft. It's always nice to know the words we use in the game are actually being used as words too!

And welcome to the forum. I look forward to seeing more word suggestions from you - and anything else you feel like saying.

To answer a question you asked in an email, yes, the site is run from Australia - I'm in Melbourne - and a number of the regular forum contributors are Australian too. But there are players and forumites from many parts of the world. We all seem to be learning lots of new things from each other about how English is used in different countries.

Jay, I think I've tried lego myself when playing Chi. More than once. But I didn't let it get to me like you seem to be doing. I was determined to use the experience, to become stronger...

Well, anyway, as regards your question, we don't try to interpret trademark law (although I'm sure we could if we wanted to). We just consider whether the word is sometimes written in all lower-case letters.

It seems that the name of the jeans is most commonly written as Levis or  Levi's. However, there are some examples of levis. For example, the opening sentence of Thomas Pynchon's novel V: "Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia."

And the Shorter Oxford gives the lower-case version as an alternative. Also, some Scrabble word lists allow levis.

None of the above seems to apply to Lego. Possibly the reason for the difference is that levis are regarded as a more charismatic feature of our popular culture than Lego.

But I'm not sure whether it's justified for levis to be treated as a common word. What do people think about that?

Phrases like "chiefly dialect" tend to arouse my suspicions. But this one seems better known than many such words. I found a book review in the Daily Telegraph which asks, "Where did eel pie and flead and Scottish pancakes go? Why didn't our mothers teach us to make these things?" Later in the same review:

Flead cakes, a vanished treasure of [an author's] boyhood, are simply a kind of rough puff pastry made with fresh unrendered lard instead of butter; easy to make if you have a butcher who can sell you good flead. I found four recipes for this on Google in a few short minutes.

I'll add flead and fleed.

But technomc's quip raises an interesting point. The Shorter Oxford does list flea as a verb, meaning "rid of fleas". There is no information on inflections, implying they are regular. Indeed, the usage example quoted uses fleaing: "The dog fleaing itself in the hot dust." (W H Auden).

To me, this suggests there should be a word fleaed - just as there is a word sambaed. And, indeed, some writers have used this word. For example Robert Crawford writes, in The savage and the city in the work of T S Eliot, "If the continuing ritual represents a progressive pruning away of the trappings of mythology, then it would follow that no one has clipped the lion's wings or fleaed his rump or pared his claws..."

Yet our word list lacks both fleaed and fleaing. I think they should be added too.

"Birdy" sent the following message via the website:

Puzzle of Saturday, Oct. 13.
in Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd Ed. p.593:
"drang:  Newfoundland. narrow passage or alleyway.  Also, drung."

My reply was:

Your suggestion is a good one. The next time I update the Chihuahua word list, I'll add "drang" and "drung".