Digital Commons Network^™

The Cystine Chapel, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, the words SISTINE, CYSTINE and CYSTEINE are pronounced in the same way -- a homonymic fact which overtaxes my imagination. The latter two are sulfur-containing amino acids, and ambiguity in spoken English is so real that the preferred dictionary pronunciations are seldom used: CYSTEINE most often becomes a three-syllable word, /sis tay een/, accented on the second syllable so the hearer knows with certainty what the speaker means. In the same fashion, HOMOCYSTEINE and HOMOCYSTINE are in practice pronounced differently, although dictionary preference is for homonymy, rhyming with SISTINE. Note also BENZENE and …

Ensnaring The Elusive Eodermdrome, Gary S. Bloom, John W. Kennedy, Peter J. Wexler

Word Ways

We wish to introduce the recreational aspects of the eodermdrome, which is a recently formulated concept dealing with the structure of language units such as letters and words. Although this concept may eventually lead to a numerical way to compare the structural differences between languages and to trace structural development in a single language, the majority of individuals who learn about eodermdromes evince less interest in their potential scholarly ramifications than in the delightful task of creating them.

Venerable Venery, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

If you thumb through your standard deskside dictionary, you may be shocked to learn that venery is a euphemistic term describing coital commerce.

To stem any blazing tide of flaming pens charging us with smut, sensationalism, prurience and suchlike, let us assure you that our topic concerns another -- wholly respectable -- interpretation of the word.

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.

Onomasticon Iv, George H. Scheetz

Word Ways

'Wright' is a word whose earliest recorded use was, according to the OED, circa 695 A.D. The word is now considered archaic or dialectic, but in its 1300-year history 'wright' has spawned many attributed and combined words and surnames, the subject of this listing. All words are from Webster's Second, the OED, or S. Baring-Gould's Family Names and Their Story. Words which double as surnames are indicated by an asterisk and are either recorded in Baring-Gould or known to the author; if a reader knows someone whose surname is in this list, but not noted as such, please send …

Quatrain, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

I burn my matches at both ends,
They're kinda hard to handle.
But ah, my friends, and oh, my foes,
I can't afford a candle. (Anon.)

That is a verse of poetry -- right?

Wrong -- it is a stanza, a stave, or even a strophe, but not a verse.

Kickshaws, Howard W. Bergerson

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Once More: What Is A Word?, Dana Richards

Word Ways

In recent issues of Word Ways, Dmitri Borgmann and Richard Lederer struggled with the age-old linguistic question "What is a word?" without coming to any very satisfactory conclusions. In fact, both authors convinced me what a word is not: a collection of letters strung together (with or without spaces), or simply a collection of morphemes. This note attempts to shed a little further light on the problem.

Comic Book Coinages, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

My wife and I were on a plane high over the Atlantic en route to England. We occupied aisle seats, and next to us was a young English lad, obviously returning home with his parents (in the row behind us) after a visit to the United States. On the boy's lap was a comic book -- I've forgotten the title -- and an English dictionary was at his side. A Latin dictionary lay on the floor. He had a puzzled expression on his face and it seemed as though he might be close to tears for his chin trembled ever …

Clippity Clop, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Maxey Brooke's concise and informative disquisition on clipping in the May issue of Word Ways inspires further exploration of this pervasive and versatile method of word-formation.

Dctnr Wrds Wtht Vwls, Jeff Grant, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Despite the promise of the title, this article is not concerned with the intelligibility of dictionary words without vowels (that is, with the letters AEIOUY removed), but instead with that tiny group of words which contain no vowels at all. For the sake of completeness, we include a considerably larger group of words which appear vowelless, but in reality are not -- words which use the letters V or W to represent vowel sounds. On the other hand, we do not include two burgeoning classes of vowelless words quite familiar to the average reader -- abbreviations such as MR., MRS., …

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

A Myth Good For A Mile, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

The American poet Hart Crane sang of "the great Bridge, our Myth," but it is another kind of myth that bridges the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome and our own. See how many common English words you can identify that are derived from Greek myth in the quiz below. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue, including instructions to authors.

Circular Alphabets, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

In Language on Vacation, Dmitri Bormann exhibited several words having their letters arranged in alphabetical order (for example, ADELOPS, BILLOWY and AEGILOPS) and also in reverse alphabetical order (for example, ZYXOMMA, SPOON-FEED and SPOON-FED).

However, suppose now that the alphabet is written in a circular fashion, with the letters A to Z written in a clockwise manner, so that the Z ends up next to the A. Two questions immediately arise: (1) reading clockwise, what is the longest word that can be spelled out within one "revolution" of the alphabet? (2) similarly, what is the longest word that can …

French Slang In Literal Translation, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

I hate to agrafer (buttonhole) you with some problems which are not du sucre (duck soup), but here are some French slang phrases translated literally into English. Your problem is to deduce the English equivalent of the meaning conveyed to a Frenchman by the slang expression.

Skewling Makes It Plain, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

"Too often," resumed Skewling, "things are not made sufficiently plain."

He had been talking about the logic of language and had temporarily fallen silent, lost in his thoughts. I too had thoughts. For one thing, a gnat had settled on my nose; and for another, a very dishy au pair girl -- Swedish, blonde and bustily vital -- had come to stay with the Pickerings, and their bathroom window is directly opposite that of our spare room. Nora had not yet cottoned on to the reason behind my sudden passion for interior decorating, but she was becoming suspicious.

Single And Double Transposal Squares, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

A transposal square is a square array of letters in which each row and column can be rearranged to form a word. Philip Cohen introduced the concept to Word Ways readers in his November 1979 Kickshaws, presenting there a 10-by-10 double transposal square (ten distinct letter-combinations arrangeable into words in the rows, and ten additional distinct letter-combinations arrangeable into words in the columns). This article exhibits a 12-by-12 double transposal square produced by his construction method, as well as an 11-by-11 single transposal square.

The Case Of The Clean Limerick, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

It will come as somewhat of a surprise to some people that such a thing as a clean limerick exists -- the Rabelaisian voice of naughtiness drowns out the weaker voice of its cleanlier brother and almost completely dominates the field. The purpose of this short paper is to point out that clean limericks not only do exist but that they can be quite good; and to suggest means by which they can be recast with certain bawdy overtones, without sacrificing their purity, and thereby appeal more to man's natural rambunctiousness. This popularization process we may call 'pseudo-pornographizing'. It is …

On The Inter(E)State, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

Three Word Ways articles have been written by Dmitri Borgmann (February and May 1977) and Pamela Brang (August 1977) to support the proposition that 'all words are interesting' from a logological standpoint. As noted in the May and August Colloquies, the results left something to be desired. For example, Borgmann's efforts included two transposals and a substitute-letter transposal to nonexistent words or names; a reference to a 'dictionary combination' (a sequence of words occurring somewhere in the text of a dictionary, no more worth mention than any sequence from any other text); and a reference to a different word ('subcontinent' …

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

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

An Early French Book Of Wordplay, A. Ross Eckler, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

In the Kickshaws section of the May 1979 Word Ways, Will Shortz described a 1616 book of French wordplay by Etienne Tabourot, entitled Les Bigarrures et Touches du Seigneur des Accords (The Designs and Strokes of the Lord of Harmony), hereafter denoted by B-T. This book is believed to be the first one in the world entirely devoted to recreational linguistics. Of this work one nineteenth-century reviewer has written "This is a curious collection whose author has been pleased to temper his erudition with numerous pleasantries, sometimes good, sometimes bad and often smutty."

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.

Alphabetic Transadditions, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

In the May 1972 Kickshaws, Dave Silverman reported on efforts by mary Hazard, Gary Crum and Murray Pearce to select a four-letter word, add in turn each letter from A through Z, and rearrange to form 26 five-letter words. These alphabetic transadditions left something to be desired, using plurals such as QERES ('qere' is a marginal instruction in the Hebrew Bible to substitute one fowel for another), possessives such as EZER'S (Ezer is a Biblical personage), and words such as QADER (not in any of my dictionaries).

Palindromes: The Ascending Tradition, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

The accessibility of the palindrome in ancient times to the lands east and south-east of the Mediterranean implies evidence that its intrigues as a language form antedate the Romance language family and were operant in a murkier, and far more remote, period.

Agamemnon Words, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

The name Agamemnon is composed of three consecutive sets of three letters in which the first and third letters in each triplet is the same. There are a handful of such words in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (Second or Third Editions): AGAMEMNON, MIMULUSES, ILICACAEAE, SUSUHUNAN, COCCACEAE and the doubtful MIMICISMS ("morbid tendencies to mimicry"). A search for analogous twelve-letter words in Levine's pattern word lists proved unsuccessful, although a few one-letter misses did surface: IMITATRESSES, IRIDODONESIS (and its listed plural), VIVIDIALYSIS (and its inferred plural).

Double Reverse Play, Helen Gunn, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

When we were children, many of us went through a phase -- much to the dismay and embarrassment of our parents -- of reciting everything backward. Every so often, this practice would unearth a genuine reversal: live/evil, doom/mood, straw/warts. The following phrases define both words in a series of two word reversals; the length of each word is given in parenthesis. Be warned: some clues are straightforward, but others are obscure. Answers can be found at the end of this issue.

Clipt, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

Among the twenty or so ways that new words enter our language is clipping. Clipping, the opposite of affixing, forms a new word by eliminating part of a complex or compound word. Usually the meaning is not changed.

Superulltramegalosesquipedalia, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Recently, Jeff Grant of Hastings, New Zealand supplied the editor with the full 3641-letter name of the protein Bovine Glutamate Dehydrogenase, as constructed from the amino acid residue sequence shown in The Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure (1973), Volume 5, Supplement 1, published by The National Biomedical Research Foundation. Although this word has been cited by the Guinness Book of Records since 1976 as the longest word known, it was never written out in full there, nor has it apparently been published anywhere else.

Kickshaws, Charles W. Bostwick

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.