Upendran S is a columnist and former professor at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His popular weekly column “Know Your English” has appeared in The Hindu for over three decades, and has been the basis for four volumes of the same title. He blogs about word origins and language use at https://upendranskye.wordpress.com. Since retirement, he has been spending much of his time falling on the tennis court, occasionally breaking a bone or two.