In today's edition of "Dear Mr. Made-Up BS Guy", we'll tackle an etymology enigma emanating from an excellent reader and sister, "Name-Withheld-bol."

She writes, "Crotchety?  Is that really a word -- or the right word?  Where did that come from?  Sounds kinda gross...."  Like most women, her mind is ever in the gutter.

Nevertheless (or more), I tirelessly researched for nearly a minute, and decided the answer was important enough to provide in a column.  Unfortunately, it's not a very long or terribly interesting answer, so please indulge me in a little Dave Barry style question-and-answer format, which has been proven to take up column inches while reducing tartar build-up and helping readers lose weight while experiencing 7% better orgasms.  Don't ask how we measure that.

Question:  Isn't "Made-Up" and "BS" a repetitive redundancy in your title, which, being made up, creates a trifecta of supererogatory wordiness?

Answer:  I'm afraid you are mistakenly wrong in holding that misconception of untruth.  Leaving out the "BS" might give the impression that I'm not even a guy, which is patently false as well as being misaligned with factual truth.  In addition, BS is not, by definition, made-up.  It can be completely true, but unrelated to the subject at hand.  In fact, phytoplankton generates 63 terawatts of chemical power every year, which is more than quadruple what humans consume!

Question:  Wow!  That is superfluous!  Still, is it really necessary to put "Guy" in the title?  Isn't that sort of like saying "Paris Hilton bimbo"?

Answer:  You may have a valid, but mean point there.  On the other hand, how do you explain Rosie O'Donnell?  Actually, please don't.

On to crotchety!  As you might have guessed, it is related to the term "crochet", which is an activity whereby women of all ages between 96 and 1004 get together to painstakingly weave yarn into an unbelievably long scarf, often suitable for King Kong.  This hobby has always been difficult to understand for people who are not in the habit of spending long periods of their day manufacturing drool.  As such, it has been described as "odd", "whimsical", and "downright weird".

However, except for among rappers, who have special license to use words without regard to their meaning or grammatical function, the practice of calling a person "crochet" has not caught on.  Mainstream communicators remember from grammar school that an essential step in the creation of adjectives is the adding of a "y" to the word.  This is where the saying, "All adjectives end in 'y' except the ones that don't," comes from.

In this way, "man" becomes "many", as in, "Neil Rackers was not very many on that lousy attempt!"  "Sill" becomes "silly", from the hard learned lesson that leaving a pie to cool in an open window is just an invitation for bears to visit your house and break your furniture.  Hence the oft heard criticism: "This war on terror is just silly!"

I hope this has helped, and that you enjoy your tartar free orgasmic weight loss.

Question:  Was any of that even remotely true?

Answer:  That depends upon your definition of "remotely", which we'll have to save for a future "Ask Mr. Made-Up BS Guy" column!