whither kudos?

(There was a lot of silliness about kudos on sffnet . . . )

So I had to look up the etymology of "kudos," which looked Japanese to me . . .

"fame, renown," 1799, from Gk. kyddos "glory, fame, renown," from kydos "glory, fame," lit. "that which is heard of". A singular noun in Gk., but the final -s is usually mistaken as a plural suffix in Eng., leading to the barbarous back-formation kudo (first attested 1941).

Kudzu, though, is just the Japanese word "kuzu," an admirably economical rendition o...