EVERY so often a word comes along that everyone seems to be using while I've never heard of it.
'Doofus' is the latest example and my son and daughter now regularly insult each other with it.
Perhaps predictably, it originates from America and is thought to be a derivation of 'dude' and 'goof', put together to mean a blithering idiot.
Sightings of 'doofus' in print are rarer but, in the last two weeks, I've spotted it twice in newspaper film reviews - of American movies naturally - so it is now spreading here like a hospital virus.
The plural is apparently 'doofuses' but couldn't it also be 'doofi' just as the plural of hippopotamus can be either hippopotamuses or hippopotami ?
And could a hippopotamus itself be a doofus ?
Perhaps.
I once saw a wildlife film of a mother hippo accidentally crushing her newborn calf (...it somehow survived).
Definitely a doofus.