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Friday, March 4, 2005

Meet the Muddlefoots

As I do every day around 5:30, I was thinking about "Darkwing Duck." On the show, Darkwing's meek alterego, Drake Mallard, lives next to an annoying family. The father is Herb Muddlefoot. The wife is Beaky Muddlefoot. The two sons, if I remember correctly, are Tank and Honker Muddlefoot. Now, judging from the enthusiastic response my last grammar-related post drew, I feel I can benefit from much feedback to this question:

When speaking about Drake Mallard's neighbors as a group, should I call them the Muddlefoots or the Muddlefeet?

I mean, the plural of "foot" is "feet," but should this rule extend to proper names? Input, please, you grammaticians and associated pickers of nits.

3 comments:

  1. Muddlefoots. You don't call Bob and Jenny Foote the Feet, do you? I don't. Maybe I should, just to annoy.

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  2. DARKWING, DUCKING, DUCK! "Let's. Get. Dangerous."


    It would be Muddlefoots, if it's their last name. Can't change the last name. If Muddlefoot is a designated nickname, however, 2 Muddlefoots are muddlefeet. Or, use my rule for pluralizing all gramatically ambiguous words: add an "i". I.e., Muddlefooti.

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  3. see, i see a post like that, and i come over all linguistics-nerdy. it's "muddlefoots" because the last name muddlefoot doesn't have a proper head. go read Pinker's "The Language Instinct" (which you should read anyway). there's a whole chapter on the subject. ok, that's enough geeking out on your blog. Sue

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