As a member of the mathematics community for many years, the standard pronunciation is: E equals the quantity MC squared Also, as pointed out by Mark Adler in the comments, this is the standard pronunciation used when recording mathematics textbooks for the blind (thanks for the info Mark!...

Prepend: (computing, linguistics, transitive) To attach (an expression, phrase, etc.) to another, as a prefix.

This functionality is not available in Windows, see this excellent Microsoft blog for an explanation.

The short answer: yes, it is productive, because you can create words using this suffix that have never been heard before, such as the two-trillion-and-sixteenth coin in Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin. From Wikipedia: A productive grammatical process defines an open class, one which admits new wo...

Although such variation could be the result of things like when the word was borrowed into the language, this variation is probably due to the prosodic structure of the words; we get different vowel sounds because of the way that stress influences vowel quality in English. In English, unstressed...

This is called paraprosdokian. A paraprosdokian (from Greek "παρα-", meaning "beyond" and "προσδοκία", meaning "expectation") is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpre...

"Guys" can be used in English as gender neutral to refer to a group of mixed gender. You will even hear women refer to other women as "guys." The closest linguistic equivalent with a feminine tilt would be "gals". "Guys and gals" is a rather informal variant of "ladies and gentlemen". (Note the ...

That's from stage directions for plays. "Enter [Name]" and "Exit [Name]" are commonly used to indicate when a player is entering or leaving the scene. Naturally, it's been incorporated into the language to achieve a dramatic effect, and has come to be used when the speaker or writer wants to ach...

According to Etymonline, ananizapta is a magical word from the mid-15th century, which is around the end of the medieval period. On Google Books I came across this passage: For the falling sickness the charm was the following: Ananizapta, ferit mortem dum læder querit, Est mala...

I commonly use the word 'guys' to refer to a group of males colloquially. It's colloquial but not rude, off putting, condescending, patronizing (though I wouldn't use it with a group of men at a board meeting (hypothetically of course), unless I knew them). So, some that I would not consider as r...

I thought it’s unusual for me to be able to come to the end of Maureen Dowd’s’ article without any second thoughts on her particular turn of phrases when I’ve read today’s NYT article titled “Reindeer Games,” in which Dowd dealt with Michigan Congressman Kerry Bentivolio’s plan (or dream) to impe...

Language is a consensus between the speaker and listener. Lots of English words (arguably most of them, but let's not get too technical) originate from other languages. Words like "orange" or "beef" or "feng shui". Because the speaker and listener are speaking the same language, and the words ...

Since 'not unpleasant' is an understatement (litotes), an appropriate counterpart might be: tolerable.