Weekend roundup

The Numbers Guy column at The Wall Street Journal takes a look at numbers in NFL games -- stats you probably aren't familiar with.

In the Merriam-Webster Wordwatch column, you can learn the origin of caddie, cadet and madder plant.

James Kilpatrick talks about meter. And for those of you who couldn't care less, he takes another quick stab at placement of "only."

In "On Language," William Safire deconstructs a few cliches: tiger by the tail, pedal to the metal and beating a dead horse, among a few others.

Ruth Walker of Verbal Energy talks about the "quaint, old-fashioned" meaning of footprint vs. the new meaning, the amount of space something takes up ("your hard drive's footprint").