Question: An acquaintance of mine, an attorney, used the word "likeliness." I didn't say anything at the time, though I thought the word should be "likelihood." On the other hand, why isn't the correct word "likeliness"? It seems like a more logical formation than "likelihood." It seems that all the other "-hood" words like "childhood" and "widowhood" are made with nouns, whereas "likely" is an adjective.
Answer: To answer your second question first, you're right: "likeliness" does seem more logical than "likelihood" from our 20th-century perspective. "Likelihood" now appears as an anomaly in the English language, but in its original formation it was not an unusual word.
The story of "likelihood" really starts 1,000 years ago with an Old English noun, "had," that meant "state" or "rank." "Had" was used in combination with such nouns as "maiden," "child," and "priest"; thus "child had" and "priest had" meant what "childhood" and "priesthood" mean today. In Middle English, "had" was demoted to the rank of suffix and the spelling changed to "hod" or "hode." By the 15th century the pronunciation of the "o" had changed from long "o" as in "bode" to "o" as in "good"; the spelling was eventually changed to "hood" to reflect the pronunciation.
Meanwhile, in the 12th century, there had appeared another suffix, "-hede," that meant "condition" or "quality" and, like the synonymous Old English suffix "-ness," was often combined with adjectives. Thus "biterhede," "drunk-en-hede," and "fairhede" were synonymous with "bitterness," "drunkenness," and "fairness." By the 13th century "-hede" was being combined with nouns, too, just as "-hod" or "-hode" was, to form new words like "knight-hede" and "womanhede." Eventually the "-hode" suffix gained precedence and replaced the "-hede" suffix altogether. And that's when the adjective "likely" came along. Back in the 14th century, "likely" was used to mean not only "probable," as it is used today, but also simply "similar, like." The suffix "-hode" was added, and the resulting noun, "likelihode," meant either "probability" or "similarity."
By the 16th century all the adjective combinations had become obsolete except "lustihood," "falsehood," and "likelihood." "Lustihood" ("robustness") still exists but isn't very common. "Falsehood" ("a lie") no longer means "falseness," as it once did. That leaves "likelihood" as the primary representative of what was at one time a larger group of words - and leaves some English speakers with the feeling that the right word ought to be "likeliness."
And, indeed, "likeliness" is a word. A synonym of "likelihood," it, too, dates back to the 14th century. The Oxford English Dictionary labels it "rare," but it seems to be gaining a bit in currency in recent years, at least among lawyers. In legalese, lawyers might speak of "likeliness to injure" and then refer to "a finding of likeliness." Non-lawyers use it as well, though not often. It probably occurs more in speech than in published writing.
Question: I've heard several sports commentators use the phrase "can of corn." I believe it has a positive connotation, but I'm not sure what it means. Does it just apply to sports (in particular, baseball)?
Answer: "Can of corn" is a phrase out of baseball's past, still occasionally used by sportscasters who like its appealingly old-fashioned quality. A batter will hit a high fly ball, and as an outfielder settles into position under it, waiting to make an easy catch, the announcer will say something like "That's a can of corn for the fielder." The phrase "can of corn" simply denotes a high fly that's easily caught. (If the catch is a piece of cake, the fly ball is a can of corn.)