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shameless pleading    Dear Word Detective: First of all, is it
“lambast” or “lambaste”? The question is prompted by the local
sports page which used the word to describe how the local
college team defeated a visiting team. I tried to find its
origin by going to online dictionaries but without success: they
just define it. Also, what is it with sportswriters? They either
use cliches or try to use relatively little-used words: some of
these they understand and others they use seemingly because they
sound good. One, for example, used “penultimate” apparently to
mean “the ultimate” because, I guess, that’s what it sounded
like to him. I imagine he never took Latin. — MMU.  Well, to
tackle (yuk yuk) your second question first, I actually find
myself feeling a lot of sympathy for sportswriters. A general
assignment reporter or columnist encounters and reports on a
wide variety of events, furn