A) People often seek a single word when sometimes a nominal phrase is necessary. a corollary to this is people often seek an English word for something usually expressed in <foreign language>. an extreme example of this is schadenfreude (much in the news what with the Spitzer affair); we see έπιχαιρεκακία anglicized and offered up as an English equivalent.
The very word the suckered Nuncle Z into coming to this board.
In a related note, the thing that tends to bug me is when someone comes looking for, e.g., a word or phrase, the referent of which is some person who meets some criterion or set of criteria and gets as an answer some traits that might be associated with that person. For example, "What do you call someone who is always complaing about other peoples' use of words?" and rather than getting, say, 'peevologist', they get 'irritating' or 'noble' or whatever adjective the offerer thinks might be one used to describe such a person.[/harrumphation]
