[I've never heard "shit disturber" nor "shit stirrer", though I think it would be pretty easy to guess what they mean in context.

["Ess-oh-el" I've heard quite a bit. It sounds slangish to me, but it's not uncommon at all.

[Duplex is extremely common here. I've also heard "triplex" and "four-plex" (not "quadriplex") for analogous buildings with more homes. I think I may have even heard "five-plex", and I would expect the rest to continue with English words for the numbers and no more Latin prefixes. I also have a vague recollection of duplex as an adjective for some type of communication protocol, back in the days when modems were slow. Presumably duplex as an adjective is the original word, and the noun arose as a shortening of a two-word phrase like "duplex apartment" -- same as vacuum cleaner, convertible automobile, upright piano, and no doubt many more which I can't think of off the top of my head.

[I'm in the western U.S. Sometimes our vocabulary is somewhat different from that of the East. In any case, S.O.L. and duplex surely aren't exclusive to Canada.]

[Ah, OK. So how is it pronounced? "STRAT-a-jerry"? "stra-TEE-juree"?]

[Could be. "Cueing" still looks wrong to me. On the other hand, "queueing" looks right. "Rueing" also looks right to me. ("Ruing" looks too much like "ruin".) But "imbueing" looks wrong, and "sueing" looks very wrong.

[If I were playing Boggle, I'd expect to try both versions in every case, and then check the dictionary afterward to see which ones I get. Doing that now, I see that Merriam-Webster allows either spelling for cue, queue, and glue, but only the shorter spelling for rue, sue, and imbue -- which is just the opposite of what I'd expected for rue.

[Just above imbue, I happen to notice imbrue, a word I'd never heard before (it means to stain), which also takes only the shorter spelling. True, which I knew had a verb sense (to make level), shows both spellings, with "trueing" preferred. Blue, which I didn't know had a verb sense but it seemed a likely guess ("to make blue, ... to turn blue", duh), also shows both spellings, with neither preferred.

[I see that every -ue plus -ing combo can be spelled without the e, and some have the option of with or without. But I see no pattern for which verbs allow the option and which don't. Any other -ue verbs I've forgotten to look up?]

[Yes, I did have that curious slip in mind. Seriously, I think it's far less likely than not that the two are actually having an affair, though not quite so improbable as to rule it out entirely. Somewhat less unlikely, I think, is the possibility that they may have had an affair in the past, and/or that there is some lingering romantic ambiguousness in their friendship, particularly from her side.]

[No. Should I?]

[The latter, but I think you knew that. A little more precisely, "before the almost last". Ante- means "before", as in antedate, antenatal, antediluvian. Even the ante in a poker game is the bet made before the deal.

[Pen- means "mostly but not quite completely", as in peninsula (insula = island) or penumbra (umbra = shadow). The Latin here is paene, unrelated to Latin poena = punishment, whence penalty, penance, etc. Also unrelated to Latin pendere = to weigh, which yields several words related to hanging or leaning (eg, pendulum, pendant thence pennant, impending, appendix, penchant, and ultimately even pensive and ponder), as well as several other words related to paying, by way of money on the scale (eg, pension, compensate). Also unrelated to Latin penis = tail, whence pencil, penicillin, and of course penis.

[Pencil and pen both come to us by way of Latin, but the roots are unrelated. The latter comes from pinna = feather (related to penna = wing), which also gives us the name of a type of pasta and a few lesser-known scientific words (eg, pennate). From my distant youth, I recall the label "pennicorn" applied to a horselike creature having both the horn of a unicorn and the wings of a pegasus, but I can't find any trace of pennicorn today. Perhaps it's just a word that my brother invented. I distinctly remember him drawing a picture of a pennicorn once.]