Good things from 2014

Now that hat season is in full swing, we thought it would be nice to have a look at some of the good bits of 2014 at English Language & Usage.

First of all, some congratulations to members who hit 20K reputation this year:*

• Marthaª
• Jon Hanna
• Mr Hen
• Yoichi Oishi
• TimLymington
• medica
• kris
• Josh61
• mplungjan
• Mari-Lou A
• Edwin Ashworth
• Sven Yargs
• ermanen
• choster

Job well done.

On a similar note, some of the more interesting gold badges earned this year:

Socratic

• Yoichi Oishi (×6)
• janoChen
• Brian Hooper

Unsung Hero

• Gary’s Student
• Josh61

Marshal

• Mari-Lou A
• medica
• Daniel
• Mitch

Three questions from this year that caught our attention (in a good way)

• Why did /x/ change to /f/ in English? The question exposes an interesting shift in English pronunciation and has an answer that gives a nice explanation for how the change took place and shows where the sound still exists in other languages.
• Who originated “Merry Christmas”? A nice topical question for the time of year. It opens with a potted history of the phrase, and the answer takes us the rest of the way with some interesting tidbits.
• Is there a general rule for which types of nouns end in -archy vs. -cracy? While the question body is somewhat lack-lustre, the most upvoted answer is insightful giving a helpful comparison of the two suffixes.

Thanks to all our members for helping make EL&U the thriving community that it is. Thanks for an enjoyable 2014 and have a happy 2015!

*Thanks to the SE team for compiling the list. Since this was done in the middle of December more folks may have passed the line.