Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Linguistics (4053)
- Linguistic (845)
- Puzzles (38)
- Palindromes (34)
- Puzzle (29)
-
- Quiz (29)
- Transposals (15)
- Games (13)
- Puns (13)
- Anagrams (10)
- Poem (9)
- Poems (9)
- Word puzzle (9)
- Mathematics (8)
- Poetry (8)
- Homophones (6)
- Transpositions (6)
- Alice in Wonderland (5)
- Crossword (5)
- Obituary (5)
- Project (5)
- Word-play (5)
- Alphametics (4)
- Butler University (4)
- Lewis Carroll (4)
- Magic Squares (4)
- Martin Gardner (4)
- G4G (3)
- Gathering for Gardner (3)
- Humor (3)
- Publication Year
- File Type
Articles 3271 - 3300 of 4911
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Sets Of Mutually Antonymic Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Sets Of Mutually Antonymic Words, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
Two words - life and death, yes and no, black and white - precisely or approximately opposite each other in meaning are called antonyms. By and large, antonyms have received little attention in the logological realm. Exceptions have been two opposite concepts expressed by the same word (TEMPER means both "to harden" and "to soften") and two words anatomic in their most obvious senses which are synonyms in some other sense (to "best" and to "worst" both mean "to get the better of"). Some words have numerous antonyms, phenomenon one of synonym rather than of antonymy.
Robots On The Rampage, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Robots On The Rampage, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
In 1920, the Czech playwright Karel Capek thrust Rossum's Universal Robots upon an unsuspecting world. The robots in his play, "R.U.R.", were artificially manufactured persons, mechanically efficient but at first devoid of sensibility. They eventually acquired souls and began acting like human beings, revolting against their masters and destroying them.
Death: A Logological Perspective, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Death: A Logological Perspective, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
In my continuing search for answers to Life's Great Questions, I have run across a major imbalance between Birth and Death. That imbalance is by no means obvious to the casual observer, however. Both BIRTH and DEATH are five-letter, one-syllable words ending in the digraph TH. In addition, their first letters are only two spaces apart in the alphabet, and the printed lowercase forms of those letters, b and d, happen to be mirror images or reversals of one another. One can, accordingly, not really ask for greater congruence between BIRTH and DEATH, unless one seeks a single word conveying …
A Tribute To Greatness, Dmitri A. Borgmann
A Tribute To Greatness, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
More than two millenia have passed since the "brutal" murder of Julius Caesar. Such was the stature of this giant among men, however, that his influence continues to dominate our lives today.
Mystery Mammals, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Mystery Mammals, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
A form of wordplay antedating the start of the twentieth century, but still alive and well, is that of hidden or buried words. The following sentence, taken from page 31 of the June 1972 issue of the British magazine Games & Puzzles, illustrates the technique:
The Eternal Feminine, Dmitri A. Borgmann
The Eternal Feminine, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
Careful observers of the word scene have long known that some of the simplest English words can be anagrammed or arranged to form feminine first names. Thus, STINKER is a rearrangement of KRISTEN, the word TOASTER may be transposed into ROSETTA, LEARNED is an anagram of DARLEEN or DARLENE, and INTERNEEDS converts into ERNESTINE. (Parenthetically, the word LEARNED may also be rearranged o form a "masculine" name, LEANDER, but we don't want to think about that just now.)
Order In A Resistentialist World, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Order In A Resistentialist World, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
Earlier in the twentieth century, some French intellectual whose name escapes me now advanced the philosophy of resistialism. The possibly central tenet of this philosophy was the idea that inanimate objects have an intrinsic tendency to resist us, thwarting our objectives. Resistentialism appears to have made little headway in the world, for I do not find the word in my dictionary. Yet, nowhere is the truth of resistetialism more evident than in logological research. As we all know, if we need a word or name to complete some logological structure such as a word square, or a word set exemplifying …
Singer, Singer!, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Singer, Singer!, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
What well-known singer does the definition "to cross a river" bring to your mind? Why, Tennessee Ernie FORD, of course. similarly, "fish country" suggests Judy GARLAND (= gar + land) and the clue "the evidence: a joint!" enigmatically refers to Rosemary CLOONEY (= clue + knee, in pronunciation).
The Calligraphic Decalogue, Dmitri A. Borgmann
The Calligraphic Decalogue, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
Western man has always felt the need to find a unifying principle, an underlying uniformity, in terms of which to explain the apparent diversity surrounding him. In logology, the search is on for a sort of universal catalyst - an operation or transformation in which all words and names, regardless of their length or letter constitution, can be subjected, changing them to other words or names. In the larger world of which logology is a part, scientists are trying to identify one tiny particle, of various aggregations and arrangements of which everything in the universe consists.
A New Approach To Transpositions, Dmitri A. Borgmann
A New Approach To Transpositions, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
Although many words and names are transportable, many more are not, learning a bitter taste in the loglogist's mouth. One way of overcoming the problem in relation to groups of words and names is to adopt the transaddition which includes one extra letter as an acceptable standard of achievement, which the further proviso that each transaddition need not adhere to that standard: all that is necessary is for all members of a group of transadditions to adhere to it is their average. This supplementary condition permits some members of the group to add zero letters, becoming genuine transposals, these being …
Unbalanced Word Division, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Unbalanced Word Division, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
In an article in the November 1974 Word Ways, Merlin X. Houdini explored and solved the problem of dividing an eight-letter word, ESTHONIA, into 35 different pairs of four-letter words, such as HENS and IOTA, using only Webster's Second Edition as a base of operations.
Quelque Chose, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Facing The End, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Facing The End, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
If someone were to ask you to name three American communities beginning with the letter Z, could you? Unless you happen to live in one, you might have difficulties, for there are only two cities in the nation with populations exceeding 10,000 and beginning with the letter Z: ZANESVILLE, Ohio and ZION, Illinois. Yet there are many hundreds of communities in the United States beginning with the last letter of the alphabet. While some names occur in a good many states - there are numerous Zions, for example - the actual number of "different" Z names is a figure approaching …
Mary's Little Anagram, A. Ross Eckler
Mary's Little Anagram, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
May and her little lamb were lipogrammed in August 1969, univocalized in August 1986, and subjected to a variety of other logological indignities in November 1988. Here are six more way in which their story can be tortured, taken from my Word Row article in the January 1977 issue of the British magazine Games & Puzzles. See if you can figure out each modus operandi before reading the explanation at the end of the article.
Mammal Magic, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Mammal Magic, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
A curious linguistic phenomenon that has received little attention in recent years is the fact that you can take an ordinary English word, add a letter of your choice to it, scramble all of the letters, and produce the name of some mammal. A few examples of this phenomenon.
The Abcs Of Logology, Dmitri A. Borgmann
The Abcs Of Logology, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
What are the ABCs of logology? Why, words and names beginning with the letters ABC. Since AB- is a common prefix in English, and a word such as ABCOULOMB is very easy to pronounce, there out to be numerous ABC words and names in English.
All Is Vanity, Faith W. Eckler
All Is Vanity, Faith W. Eckler
Word Ways
The article on vanity license plates in the November 1986 Word Ways probably generated more reader response than any other article Word Ways ever published. Many readers wrote to send us their favorite specimens. John Henrick of Seattle, Washington sent us a whole published book by John and Barbara Dixon entitled The Plate Book: "Puzzle Plates" The New American Hi-Way Graffiti (Voler Publishing Company, Seattle; 1982), containing approximately 52,000 examples. In preparing this sequel to the first article, I Leaderer of Scarsdale, New York and Vernon MacLaren of Augusta, Maine. The latter pointed out that the subject is properly registration …
Wordplay In The 19th Century, A. Ross Eckler
Wordplay In The 19th Century, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Modern recreational linguistics, as codified by Dmitri Borgmann in "Language on Vacation" (Scribner's, 1965), primarily views words as collections of letters to be manipulated in various ways, and secondarily as combinations of sounds and carriers of meaning. As in other branches of scholarly inquiry, this narrow focus has enabled today's logologists to see relationships more clearly, to ask new questions, and in general to elucidate the subject to an extent their predecessors could not even comprehend. Yet with such advances come myopia - one sees the individual trees, but no longer the forest. It is extremely instructive to look at …
Writing On The Wall, Walter Shedlofsky
Writing On The Wall, Walter Shedlofsky
Word Ways
Good afternoon, Lieutenant Jamison. I appreciate your taking off time to see me. I am Lyle Stanton, lawyer for the estate of Malcolm Travis who died three weeks ago.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 4
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 4
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Poetry And The Palindrome, Haim Kilov
Poetry And The Palindrome, Haim Kilov
Word Ways
Editor's Note: In the February 1984 Word Ways, Haim Kilov and his associate S. El'man translated an article by V. Khromov on Russian palindromes originally appearing in Nauka i Zhizn 9 (1970). This article alluded to an earlier one by Semyon Kirsanov (1906-1972), a well-known Soviet poet, in Nauka i Zhizn 7 (1966). The following is a translation of that article, with various amplifications in brackets. Note that certain Cyrillic letters transliterate into groups of English letters (ch, kh, sh, shch, ya, ye, yu, zh), marring the palindromic appearance. In addition there appear to be a few lines where Kirsanov …
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 at least one month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.
A Recreational Linguistics Library, David Morice
A Recreational Linguistics Library, David Morice
Word Ways
The following article is adapted from a paper presented to the class "Foundations and Collections Development" in the University of Iowa's School of Library and Information Science. The professor, Gerald Hodges, commented on it in part: "It appears to me that you have done the unthinkable - build an enjoyable and entertaining collection for an academic setting... I do feel that your selection process was systematic, and I think you are on solid ground in going with those titles which had multiple favorable reviews. Your annotations not only tell me sufficient information about each title but do indeed justify the …
Jade, Darryl Francis
Jade, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
I have two daughters, Jade Roxann, who was born in 1981, and Elli Caroline, born in 1984. Over fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for Word Ways entitled "Caroline" which appeared in the May 1971 issue. That particular article examined a variety of wordplay based on the letters in the name CAROLINE. While that article preceded the appearance of my second daughter by over thirteen years, there has until now been no article related to either forename of my first daughter. As I am beginning to find that each daughter wants what the other has, I felt it was …
Vowel Structure, Dana Richards
Vowel Structure, Dana Richards
Word Ways
The vowel structure of a word is defined as its sequence of vowels, such as OIOU in obvious and conscious, or AE in pattern and amend. The only previous Word Ways studies of vowel structure focused upon finding as many of the 120 permutations of AEIOU as possible (see "Unsociable Housemaid Discourages Facetious Behavior" in November 1968, an "An AEIOUS Examination" in May (1979). In contrast, this article tackles the problems of (1) finding examples of all 216 types of vowel structure for words having three vowels among AEIOUY, and (2) finding examples of all 625 types of vowel structure …