It's a muscle, not 1-800-MATTRES

[michelel72]

I see this all the time, but running into it in two consecutive fanfics brings me here.

Take a moment to grab your upper arm (or a friend's). That thing you're holding onto ... well, it's an upper arm, actually, or even simply "arm". If you want to describe someone flexing the big muscle in the front, or if you want to use a fancier-sounding but less accurate term than "upper arm", you would refer to the biceps.

"But I don't want to refer to both arms!" you might protest. You know what? It doesn't matter. The Anglicized plural is biceps, and the singular is ... biceps. Really! Bicep is not actually a real word, in Latin or in English!

If you want the specifics, check it:

The term biceps brachii is a Latin phrase meaning "two-headed [muscle] of the arm", in reference to the fact that the muscle consists of two bundles of muscle, each with its own origin, sharing a common insertion point near the elbow joint. The proper plural form of the Latin adjective biceps is bicipites, a form not in general English use. Instead, biceps is used in both singular and plural (i.e., when referring to both arms).

The same goes for the rarer (in prose, not anatomically) triceps.

So if you find yourself writing, "He latched onto Benedict's bicep" ... stop. Replace bicep with arm if you want to avoid provoking grisly imagery for the most nitpicky of FFR's denizens, but at the very least, don't leave off the final "s". Unlike the mattress company, this action will not give you savings.

(The readers who save time by back-buttoning, on the other hand ....)