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Articles 3991 - 4020 of 4911
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Hair-It-Is, A. Ross Eckler
Hair-It-Is, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Shy Locks, said the sign over the store on South Washington Street in Alexandria, Virginia. That's a clever name for a beauty parlor, I thought, but I wonder how many people get the Shakespearean reference. Still, I mused, it probably doesn't matter -- what does count is that the proprietor has created an attention-getting name, one that just might bring in an extra customer or two. Thinking further about it, I was sure that I had seen other beauty parlors with names that played on words -- The Clip Joint and The Razor's Edge came immediately to mind.
Down Memory Lane, John Mcclellan
Down Memory Lane, John Mcclellan
Word Ways
Mnemonics, as most people know, are artificial memory-aids and may be part of an elaborate system, or an individual creation unrelated to any larger system. The word is from the Greek name of the goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne. Mother of the nine Muses, she must have been a veritable elephant of a goddess, memory-wise, to have lent her name to this fertile branch of endeavour. Unfortunately, no examples of her prowess in the 'remembering' field are extant, and it is suggested that all records of them were lost in the great fire that destroyed the Alexandrian Library some years ago.
Etymology Riddles, Barbara Hunt Lazerson
Etymology Riddles, Barbara Hunt Lazerson
Word Ways
With the aid of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which contains 46 pages of Indo-Eurpoean roots, one can discover that words that appear to be completely unrelated are in reality cognates. This information can be used to develop riddles that contain two or more such words. The point of an etymology riddle is that the cognate words share a common semantic element that is not readily apparent because some of the semantic and/or phonological changes that have occurred over the centuries have masked the common origin of the cognates.
Quakes, Darryl Francis
Quakes, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
"If an earthquake were to engulf England tomorrow, the English would manage to meet and dine somewhere among the rubbish, just to celebrate the event." Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857)
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.
An Aeiou Examination, David Shulman
An Aeiou Examination, David Shulman
Word Ways
We have often seen comments on words that have all five vowels AEIOU, usually in alphabetic order. I decided to take a particular dictionary and list all the words I could find with AEIOU in any order, eliminating those words in which a vowel was repeated. The dictionary I selected was the Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary (1973 printing) which I use frequently in the game of Scrabble.
Front Cover And Publication Information
Front Cover And Publication Information
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information for this issue.
Mighty Like A Mule, Maxey Brooke
Mighty Like A Mule, Maxey Brooke
Word Ways
Compound words result from the union of two or more simple words. They can be phrasal compounds like 'nevertheless' or or fused compounds like 'smog' (smoke and fog). Many books on linguistics mention hybrid words: compound words whose simplex components come from different languages. The usual example given is 'automobile', with the Greed-derived auto and the Latin-derived mobile. Other names for these include mongrel words or mule words.
Floral Eponyms, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Floral Eponyms, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Word Ways
In a way, flowers talk, or at least 'communicate'. Their color and fragrance more or less 'speak' to animals: the daisy, for instance, by absorbing all ultraviolet light except at the tips of the petals, presents (from the point of view of the bee the flower is trying to attract) a lit-up airfield with a ring of tiny illuminations around the dark target on which the bee can zero in. Speaking of flowers, why don't you zero in on the names of these flowers, all derived from personal names?
Crossword Puzzle Letter Frequencies, John D. Hitchcock
Crossword Puzzle Letter Frequencies, John D. Hitchcock
Word Ways
In 500 crossword puzzles syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association, and published in the "Laramie Daily Boomerang" six days a week between October 24, 1976 and June 11, 1978 (about 20 consecutive months), the number of times each letter of the alphabet was used was tabulated. The statistical results are summarized in the table on the next page, and discussed in more detail below.
Nim Aid, Idi Amin, Jeff Grant
Nim Aid, Idi Amin, Jeff Grant
Word Ways
Ever since he came to power in 1971, the Ugandan director Idi Amin has attracted considerable publicity, mostly adverse. As Robert Funt points out in the November 1977 Word Ways, this tyrant is of special interest to palindromists. The time seems right for a short logological analysis of IDI AMIN.
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.
Telephomnemonics, Boris Randolph
Telephomnemonics, Boris Randolph
Word Ways
The editor recently pointed out, in answer to a suggestion of mine that involved dialing names on the telephone, that it would be nice to have something like dialing 9288 to reach Mr. Watt. With this in mind, grab for your telephone and see who you can reach (posthumously, like Watt, of course) with the following numbers. A clue is given with each number; for a harder challenge, cover these with a sheet of paper and work with the digits alone. Answers are found in the Answers and Solutions at the end of the issue.
Onomasticon Ii, George H. Scheetz
Onomasticon Ii, George H. Scheetz
Word Ways
Little did I envision the difficulties encountered in building a list of -cide words. In general, such words are a combined form, signifying 'killer' or 'killing' (from the Latin caedere, to cut or kill). There are, however, three groups of exceptions: (1) development from other, similar roots; (2) neologisms, many of which are nonsensical; and (3) accidents of etymology.
A Word Stair Contest, Roger Hannahs
A Word Stair Contest, Roger Hannahs
Word Ways
A sequence of letters forms a word stair if each set of n consecutive letters in it forms a word: for example, a 16-space word stair of three letter words is WASHERAYETAGEMUD (was, ash, she, ... , emu, mud) from the May 1970 Kickshaws. In its May/June 1978 issue, the magazine Games sponsored a contest based on a generalization of the word stair. It allowed words of any length and any degree of overlap to be formed out of the letter sequence: for example, a 12-space generalized word stair is WORDUPSTAIRS (word, dups, upstair, stairs). More specifically, the contst objective …
A Sampler Of Long Words, Rudolf Ondrejka
Front Cover And Publication Information
Front Cover And Publication Information
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information, including the table of contents, for this issue.
Terminal Bigrams, Philip M. Cohen
Terminal Bigrams, Philip M. Cohen
Word Ways
This article reports progress on what I call the '1352 Problem': finding words that begin or end with each of the 676 possible two-letter combinations. Earlier results are given in Dmitri Borgmann's 'Zero Redundancy!' in his book Beyond Language (Problem 137), Darryl Francis's 'Zero Redundancy Rides Again' in the August 1970 Word Ways, and my 'Initial Bigrams' and 'Final Bigrams' in the May and August 1975 Word Ways.
A Thirteen-Letter Positional List, Tom Pulliam
A Thirteen-Letter Positional List, Tom Pulliam
Word Ways
A number of Word Ways readers have shown a marked interest in words in which the central letter ranged through the alphabet from A to Z, and the letter groups on both sides of the central letter also formed bona fide words. John Meyer looked at seven-letter words in the May 1978 issue; Leslie Card extended the study to nine-letter words in the August 1978 issue; Jeff Grant and Roger Hannahs continued on to eleven-letter words in the November 1978 issue.
Kickshaws, Faith W. Eckler
Very Large Numbers, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Very Large Numbers, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
In modern times, mathematicians have thought about very large numbers, and have invented names for them. Articles on this subject appeared in the February and May 1968 issues of Word Ways.
Twice In Fivers, Ralph G. Beaman
Twice In Fivers, Ralph G. Beaman
Word Ways
In a continuation of my studies on alphabetical letters in five-letter words (see the May 1978 Kickshaws and "From AB--- to ---YZ" in the November 1978 issue) I present here an analysis of five-letter words containing each letter twice in all combinations. A glance at the tabulation will show that each letter must appear two times in each of ten words, for a total of 260 required.
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.
Compounds Compounded, Richard Lederer
Compounds Compounded, Richard Lederer
Word Ways
Since earliest times, speakers of English, true to the Germanic heritage of their language, have created thousands of new words by joining together two (or more) independent morphemes to form compounds. In the November 1978 Word Ways, Dmitri Borgmann's "Word Relationships" explored the various interactions between the elements in noun-noun compounds, and Maxey Brooke's "A Complex of Compounds" illuminated the complex grammar of compound words by constructing a four-by-four matrix (Noun-Adjective-Adverb-Verb) that yielded sixteen different combinations.
Alphabet-Crashing Words, Edward R. Wolpow
Alphabet-Crashing Words, Edward R. Wolpow
Word Ways
In previous issues, Word Ways has dealt with the topic of word crashes: the occurrence of individual letters of two words in the same position in both. In this article I introduce the topic of words crashing with the alphabet -- considering the alphabet to be circular rather than linear, so that A is the next letter after Z. I also consider crashes with the alphabet written in reverse order (Z to A).
Word Ways Challenges (Part 1), Philip M. Cohen, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways Challenges (Part 1), Philip M. Cohen, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Word Ways has presented a great many challenges, explicit and implicit, since 1968; many were never taken up, and many are not available to newer readers. In this series of articles, we have attempted to gather them in one place.
The Waiting Game, John Mcclellan
The Waiting Game, John Mcclellan
Word Ways
To explain the title of this article, we must tell you about my friend and his wife who came to the City recently for a day's shopping. Their needs differed, as might be expected, and their stores lay in different directions. Deciding to meet at the Hail Columbia Hotel at one o'clock for lunch, they went on their respective ways.
Monoconsonantal Words, Darryl Francis
Monoconsonantal Words, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
In 1973, a reader of the British magazine Games & Puzzles wrote to me asking if anyone had ever compiled a list of the longest words using only on consonant, but several times over. The reader included ALLELUIA and ASSESSES in his letter, these being the longest "monoconsonantal" words that he knew using the letters L and S.
Front Cover And Publication Information
Front Cover And Publication Information
Word Ways
Front cover and publication information of this issue, including table of contents.