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Articles 3301 - 3330 of 4911
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Grandma Clancy's Cootherman Box, Timothy G. Clancy
Grandma Clancy's Cootherman Box, Timothy G. Clancy
Word Ways
As a child I was often fascinated by a small wooden box in which my grandmother kept her costume jewelry. She referred to it as her Cootherman box. It was not until recently that I decided to investigate the possible origin and meaning behind the word cootherman in an effort to understand its significance in relation to that mysterious box of jewelry.
Kophobelemnonidae, Jeff Grant
Kophobelemnonidae, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
Although not always essential to Scrabblers, one of the main functions of a dictionary is to provide its user with a clear definition of the terms it contains. For example, if we look up MIDDLE-AGED in Chambers we find 'between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner'. Fair enough! The ultimate in concision was reached by Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, which defined in early printings the word RAFTMAN as 'a raftman'. No argument there.
Author! Author! Author!, Richard Lederer
Author! Author! Author!, Richard Lederer
Word Ways
Once upon a time we had presidents named John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, William Howard Taft, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Also in the world of politics were the likes of William Lloyd Garrison, William Jennings Bryan, and Margaret Chase Smith.
N-Ciphered Texts, Donald E. Knuth
N-Ciphered Texts, Donald E. Knuth
Word Ways
Some years ago, while doing research on typography, I made a special font of type that obscured the letters in order to study the effect of spacing. Some of my students happened to look at one of my examples, and decided on their own initiative to look at one of my other examples, and decided on their own initiative to figure out the words that I thought had been obliterated. To my great surprise, they were not only able to reconstruct a highly complicated and abstruse text, but enjoyed every minute of the task! They were so hooked on the …
Reaganagram Reprise, John Henrick
Reaganagram Reprise, John Henrick
Word Ways
As the curtain rises on the denouement of the Reagan years, it seems appropriate to renew the search for apposite transposals of the President's name. In the May 1984 issue of Word Ways, the term Reaganagram was introduced by Mike Morton and A. Ross Eckler in reference to interesting permutations of the eighteen letter in RONALD WILSON REAGAN, or alphabetically arranged, AAADEGILLNNNOORRSW. To the hundreds of examples of computer-generated scramblings contained in their article, the human touch was added in the August 1984 issue through various contributions from readers.
Brit Wit: A Slang Quiz, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Brit Wit: A Slang Quiz, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Word Ways
The wit and wisdom of the common people are preserved in slang words and phrases which can sometimes be a little baffling or require insider knowledge, as when a Cockney says, "I wouldn't like to be a pawnbroker's sign on a night like this." (A really cold night can "freeze the balls off a brass monkey," and a pawnbroker's sign has, of course, not two but three balls.) Less crude and less complicated, but as amusing perhaps, are the following words and expressions from British slang. How many can you decipher? The best of British luck to you!
Kickshaws, Edward R. Wolpow
I Hear America Talking: Now Slang, Leonard R. N. Ashley
I Hear America Talking: Now Slang, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Word Ways
Now that it's baseball season, I think I'll bat out a slang quiz for you to bat around. I hope these vivid new American slang terms won't drive you batty. OK, you're at bat - if you bat one thousand, you are listening to America talking a very "now" language, and you get around among college students, druggies, truckers, cons, astronauts, and the like.
Ghostbusters, Alan Frank
Ghostbusters, Alan Frank
Word Ways
In "Our Move" in the November 1971 Word Ways, Darryl Francis demonstrated that the only safe opening move for the first player in the game of Ghost (players alternately add letters, and the one that first completes a word of four or more letters is the loser) is the letter L. He allowed only uncapitalized words from Webster's Third Edition to be used; specifically, he excluded all words labeled cap, usu cap, often cap, or sometimes cap. In the article, he invited Word Ways readers to determine the corresponding strategies for other dictionaries.
Mama, Me Shemighvinianebia, Harry B. Partridge
Mama, Me Shemighvinianebia, Harry B. Partridge
Word Ways
"Wombat, Wombat, Wombat!" muttered I, handing the list back to the amiable beast in question.
Escaped From The Language-Lab, Rudy Kousbroeck
Escaped From The Language-Lab, Rudy Kousbroeck
Word Ways
There once was a poor woodchopper. This woodchopping, he said one day to his woman, there sits no dry bread in it [it does not pay]. I work myself an accident [extremely hard] the whole day, but you and our twelve children have not to eat.
Four From Four Isn't Zero, John Henrick
Four From Four Isn't Zero, John Henrick
Word Ways
The title applies to the following tetrad of poems, written entirely in four-letter words. In these pages in November 1986, I reported on the results of a prior experiment which I had conducted to test the literal sense of a Cole Porter lyric which claimed that contemporary authors now only use four-letter words in their writings. Prose presented definite difficulties, but verse appeared to be moderately tractable.
Transposing Rates, Jeff Grant
Transposing Rates, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
A set of three different letters can be transposed in six ways. There are a number of these groups where all possible combinations are legitimate terms; for example the letters AER yield the following six words, all of which are listed in Web 2.
Do Mamaroneckers Like To Neck?, Mary Stewart Craig
Do Mamaroneckers Like To Neck?, Mary Stewart Craig
Word Ways
People with uninhibited imaginations often wonder about things that wouldn't cross saner minds. Do lobsters hurt when you boil them? Why is a lieutenant general higher in rank than a major general when a major outranks a lieutenant? What do you call people who speak Flemish besides Belgians? Until I found out they're plain old Flemings (how mundane!), I had dreamed up names with much more oomph. Why, they could be Flems, Flams, or Flooms!
Cross Of Understanding, Walter Shedlofsky
Cross Of Understanding, Walter Shedlofsky
Word Ways
"Good afternoon. Father Patrick MacReady, I presume. I am Police Lieutenant Arthur Jamison."
Mnemonics For Overlapping Groups, A. Ross Eckler
Mnemonics For Overlapping Groups, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Most mnemonics are constructed to aid in recalling the members of a single group, such as ROY G BIV for the colors of the spectrum, or Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest for the Seattle east-west streets Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike and Pine.
Gap, David Morice
Gap, David Morice
Word Ways
The names for numbers are perhaps the oldest words in our vocabulary. They are so old that the reasons for their use have been lost. There is an attempt to relate three to beyond through the prefixes tri- and trans-. There is also an attempt to relate five to hand, more apparent in the Polynesian languages than in the Indo-European.
Word-Unit Palindromes, A. Ross Eckler
Word-Unit Palindromes, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
A word-unit palindrome is a sentence (or sequence of sentences) which, word for word, reads the same in forward and reverse.
Dial N For Negative, Don Sharp
Dial N For Negative, Don Sharp
Word Ways
The negative English morphene, un- and its equivalents, was not born naturally; it was invented, like all languages, out of the need to easily reverse word meanings from positive to negative. There is no question as to the early need for the negative, as shown by the Sanskrit an-. In dozens of words since, the un- has proved its utility many times over; for sure, the un- is in.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 3
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 3
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Two New Books On Scrabble, Alan Frank
Two New Books On Scrabble, Alan Frank
Word Ways
The John G. White Chess Library in Cleveland has about one hundred thousand volumes. Victor Mollo has had about two dozen books published on bridge. But the number of titles available on Scrabble [registered trademark] can be counted on the titles of one rack, and until a year ago, none of them was based on the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.
Insertion-Deletion Networks, A. Ross Eckler
Insertion-Deletion Networks, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Word networks - collections of words of a common length that can be joined by single-letter substitutions, such as the sequence BANKER-BANTER-BATTER-BETTER-SETTER-SETTEE-SETTLE linking BANKER and SETTLE - were studied in some detail in the May and August 1973 issues of Word Ways. Non-repeating sequences from word networks, commonly called word ladders and doublets, have a long history; Lewis Carroll, among others, challenged readers to join two specified words by a ladder. However, word networks have one serious flaw: they do not allow one to incorporate words of different lengths. This can be rectified by the concept of an insertion-deletion …
Foxen In The Henhice, Richard Lederer
Foxen In The Henhice, Richard Lederer
Word Ways
Recently I undertook an extensive study of American dialects, and a friend told me of a farmer named Even Pluribus who spoke a most unusual kind of English. So I went to visit Farmer Pluribus, and there is a transcript of our interview.
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 2
Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 2
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
The Case Of The Enigmatic Rebus, Walter Shedlofsky
The Case Of The Enigmatic Rebus, Walter Shedlofsky
Word Ways
"Good afternoon. I am Police Lieutenant Jamison. I understand you three discovered the dead body of Ambrose Reckel this morning. Please tell me who you are and your relation to the deceased."
A Self-Enumerating Crossword, Lee Sallows
A Self-Enumerating Crossword, Lee Sallows
Word Ways
In the "self-intersecting reflexicon" below, one can indeed find thirteen e's, five f's, four h's, five i's, four n's, four o's, seven r's, thirteen s's, six t's, three u's, three v's, one x,. More remarkably, only twelve letters of the alphabet are used: one appearing on each of the twelve intersections created! The layout is far from unique, though experiment suggests a specimen using eleven or fewer letters is extremely unlikely.
A Comber Comes A Cropper, Harry B. Partridge
A Comber Comes A Cropper, Harry B. Partridge
Word Ways
It was along toward the autumn of the year that I found Dr. Wombat, the learned logothere, lying reading under the spreading cover of a beech, a picnic basket at his side. Surveying his classic pose I remarked that he should be reading Virgil's Eclogues.