Tricky Words in this week‘s OVI:

Ethics. I’m not suggesting that this word is tricky in its content (although some people see the way it overlaps with morality as a tricky philosophical issue), but it might be in its form. The English word-ending “-ics” is equivalent to the Slovak -ika, as in mathematics, physics, economics, statistics and now probably also informatics, but not aerobics, which is not aerobika in Slovak (it’s not a school subject). The Slovak ending -ika is clearly singular, but English words ending in “-ics” look like they might be plural, and people might not be sure if they should say “ethics is…” or “ethics are…”. There are two possibilities here: one is to think of it as a single body of ideas, a single school subject like physics, so “the role ethics plays”, and the other is to avoid the issue by using the passive: “the role played by ethics”.

Andy’s Wordshop
Ethics continued. Of course the situation is not so simple. It is possible to use the singular form “ethic”, as in “the Protestant work ethic”. Similarly you can use the singular form “statistic”, meaning one number, value, percentage or ratio, and then also the plural, as in “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics” (cf. Mark Twain). There’s no “mathematic” (an expert in this field is a mathematician), but there is “a physic”, meaning a medecine, but luckily that’s archaic, as is “physician” meaning doctor. “Economic” is an adjective meaning ekonomické or hospodárske (remember “economical” means úsporné). Another study subject is “demographics”, dealing with population developments, and recently the singular form, e.g. “the teenage demographic”, has come to mean a specific population group.