Digital Commons Network^™

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information, including a table of contents, for this issue.

Janeisms, Leroy F. Meyers

Word Ways

In the May 1980 Kickshaws, Charles Bostick introduced a variety of wordplay called Ravenisms in which one mixes cliches like mad as a wet hatter (mad as a wet hen, mad as a hatter) don't burn your bridges at both ends (don't burn your bridges behind you, don't burn the candle at both ends) put one's oar in the ring (put in one's oar, throw one's hat in the ring).

Barbadian Dialect, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

My wife Doris and I have spent several Winter vacations in Barbados, that delightful Caribbean island lying approximately at Latitude 13, a bit of information quite unnecessary to the average voyager who prefers to leave such details to the boat- and air-people whose proper business it is; nor is it our intention to trespass into the field of the travel agency. However, that low latitude indicates that Barbados is close enough to the Equator to guarantee decent weather in the Winter months.

Reversible Word Squares, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most people are familiar with reversible overcoats; by turning them insight out, one gets two garments for the price of one. The logological equivalent of this is the reversible word square, a square array of letters that contains words when read in normal left-to-right and top-to-bottom fashion (as in a crossword puzzle), but also contains words when read right-to-left and bottom-to-top.

Assorted Avocational Adventures, Amelia Austrian

Word Ways

Adults, an array, are abjectly abashed at alliteration's ancient appeal as attractive (and auspicious?) abracadabra. Another array abhors and abominates alliteration as airy artifice. An additional array appreciates and admires alliteration's artfulness, aptness, applicability, and adaptability.

Diagonal Reversible Word Squares, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the preceding Word Ways article, the editor defined and gave examples of various types of reversible word squares. An interesting and more complex variation of the reversible word square occurs when the main diagonals also form words which can be read from either the top or the base of the square. This adds a further four words to the totals possible in conventional reversible squares.

A Word Root Quiz, Lee A. Gilman

Word Ways

The twenty words listed below all contain the root loqu or locu, which is derived from the Latin loci, locutus, meaning ' to speak'. Can you match the words with the definitions at the right? Answers are given in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

Brand Name Palindromes, Robert Funt

Word Ways

In 1844 a group of eleven school teachers discovered a small waterfall near Ellenville, New York and agreed to give it a name by reversing the number of their party. The Nevele Hotel, founded in 1911, now includes Nevele Falls on its property, with a plaque permanently recording the history of its name. Stories like these are, of course, extraordinary, but there exist a good many other brand names and company names which are either palindromes or are based on similar word reversals.

Websterian High-Scoring Scrabble, Kyle Corbin

Word Ways

The article "High-Scoring Scrabble Revisited" in the May 1981 Word Ways presented a set of rules for determining in a SCRABBLE Brand Crossword Game what words are to be allowed. Applying these rules, a single Scrabble move of 1757 points was devised, based on words in Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition. The article further stated that it would be an excellent idea to find the highest scores for the entire range of Merriam-Webster dictionaries to show their variation with dictionary size.

Neologisms Revisited, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In the February 1974 issue of Word Ways, I presented a review of A Dictionary of New English, edited by Barnhart, Steinmetz and Barnhart. That dictionary was a collection of words, initials, phrases, abbreviations, acronyms and meanings which had entered the vocabulary of the English language during the period 1963-1972.

Eodermdromes And Non-Chesswords, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the February 1968 Word Ways, Temple G. Porter presented a word chess puzzle; he asked readers to trace out as many words as possible using only King's moves on a 5-by-5 chessboard inscribed with 25 different letters. In the February 1970 issue, Jean Sabine posed an interesting and still unanswered chess problem: how should one arrange the 25 different letters to maximize the number of words that can be so traced?

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue, including information for authors and subscribers.

Collective Works, David Weinberger

Word Ways

Poetry written by committee? It should not be possible, yet my family and friends often play a game which produces something like poetry. Short stories, too.

Imaginary Governments, Laurence E. Seits

Word Ways

Hetaerocracy a. Government by hetaerae (upper-class concubines) b. Government by college fellows (Webster's Second)

Can one imagine a more delightful definition than this? Inspired by Paul Hellweg's "Pick a Government" in the August 1981 Word Ways, I offer the following collection of governments that might have been.

Colloquy

Word Ways

Webster's Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Readers are encouraged to submit additions, corrections and comments about earlier articles appearing in Word Ways. Comments received up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

Hyphen-Straddling Bigrams, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

Our 26 letters allow 676 possible bigrams, and various searches have been made to find as many of these as possible in certain logological categories, particularly at the beginning and at the end of words. What follows is an attempt at discovering as many as possible of the 676 pairs straddling the hyphen in compound words. Webster's Second Edition (NI2) viewed hyphenated words more favorably than Webster's Third (NI3). In spite of the tendency to drop hyphens from the newer edition, it appears that our newest words, as found in the Addendum to NI3, have a greater likelihood of hyphenation …

Kickshaws, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

English Is A Crazy Language, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

The English language is the most widely spoken in the history of our planet. The English language had acquired the largest vocabulary and the noblest literature in the history of the human race.

Nonetheless, English is a crazy language.

Names In Theater Slang, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Can you identify the British and American stage slang given in the following list? The first twenty items are of British origin; I have not included those which might be too specialized for an American audience, such as 'Basildress' or 'Adelphian'. The second twenty items are all of American origin and many of them are in current speech.

Can Stress Induce Homography?, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

NEIGHbor, NEIGHborhood, NEIGHborliness: no matter what suffix we add, the emphasis stays on the first syllable. This is bound stress. PHOtograph, phoTOGraphy, photoGRAPHic: the emphasis changes from syllable to syllable without any good reason. This is free stress.

The Nature Of Meaning Of Stories In Conversation, Livia Polanyi

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Although everyday stories told in the course of ongoing conversations are as open to multiple readings as many literary texts, the participants in the conversational storytelling situation must assign a meaning to a given telling of a story in order to facilitate the absorption of the story into the state of general talk which normally obtains. In the present paper, work done by the American linguistic school of narrative analysis (as begun by Labov and Waletzky and further developed by the author of this paper) is brought together with insights into conversational storytelling from ethno-methodological conversation analysts (Sacks, Jefferson, etc.) …

Pick A Government, Paul Hellweg

Word Ways

Living in a democracy, we are periodically cursed (blessed?) with election year mania. Occasionally, it all seems to amount to naught, and people have been heard to ask: "Isn't there another way?" Of couse there is. Different types of government abound. More than eighty varieties are presented below. As you read through them, perhaps you'll find one that sounds a little better than democracy. On the other hand, a look at these alternatives might be enough to renew everyone's faith in the electoral process.

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

The Palindrome Syndrome, Charlene Weir

Word Ways

George Potter sighed at the cruel fate that compelled him to go through life burdened with a nocturnal affliction. Rays from the street-light, filtering through a gap in the curtain, caught the lampshade and tried to make it represent something new. But it refused to resemble anything except a black bear, then disappeared altogether as night tipped over into dawn.

E Pluribus Unum, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

In most instances, one adds an S to pluralize a word: all well and good. But when a second S is added, interestnig things begin to happen; suddenly, the word becomes singular again, or takes on an altogether new meaning -- ADVENTURES becomes ADVENTURESS, or CARES becomes CARESS.

Try your hand at identifying the following dual-identity words.

On Again, Off Again, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Here are fifty idioms you can work on -- easy once you catch onto the fact that each one is on about a phrase in which the word ON is featured.

More About Number-Names, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

This article continues my investigations of the logological properties of number-names begun in the February 1980 Word Ways with "Alphabetizing the Integers". Following the practice of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, we consider number-names up to, but not including, one thousand vigintillion. Furthermore, we disregard all 'ands' and specify that no power of ten can stand alone without a modifier: e.g., ONE MILLION, but not MILLION. All calculations reported below have been made with a hand calculator, so it may be worth verifying and extending these results with the aid of a high speed digital computer.

Myths, Forward And Backward, Patrick Hunt

Word Ways

Word palindromes are very difficult to create, much more rigorous than the various sonnet patterns, and perhaps more demanding than any other literary form. Several systematic rules have, however, aided me in word palindrome construction.

English?, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

There are four basic ways wehreby words enter a language. There are the original words, so old we can trace them no further. In English, this is a handful of Celtic words. Next, there are imposed words: those forced upon a people by their conquerors. After the Celts, these were the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons (including the Jutes), the Danes, and the Norman-French. Finally, there are invented words and borrowed words.