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More Specialty Definitions, Bernard G. Couvillion
More Specialty Definitions, Bernard G. Couvillion
Word Ways
In the February 1970 Word Ways, Louis Delpino introduced Specialty Definitions, a hard-to-define activity best illustrated by examples such as SAWTURNE (carpenter's wine) and LOXATIVE (smoked salmon cathartic). This game seems to be popular with a number of authors.
Shrinking Violets, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Shrinking Violets, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
For all sorts of reasons, many authors have wanted to conceal their true identities from the public, and have written under the guise of assumed names, or pseudonyms. Famous authors indulging in this practice include Samuel Longhorne Clemens, better known as MARK TWAIN; William Sydney Porter, masquerading as O. HENRY; and the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, disguised as LEWIS CARROLL.
A Logology Cash Contest, Ralph G. Beaman
A Logology Cash Contest, Ralph G. Beaman
Word Ways
Given below is a Word List. You are asked to write an essay about it. The entry with the most complete and most definitive discussion will receive the grand prize of twenty-five dollars ($25.00). A consolation prize of five dollars ($5.00) will be awarded to the most amusing or most ingenious entry.
Chair Aids Tool Is Into, Willard R. Espy
Chair Aids Tool Is Into, Willard R. Espy
Word Ways
By sound, many words are a series of shorter words strung together, the parts often having no relationship in meaning to the whole: QUERIED = QUEER + REED. In the August 1969 Word Ways, J. A. Lindon suggested the name homophone for this type of word play. Notice that it extends the concept of homonym which, strictly speaking, is a single word with one sound but two or more spellings. The homophone is the aural equivalent of the charade, in which the constituent words must be read instead of spoken.
Croakers And Swift Croakers, James I. Rambo, Mary J. Youngquist
Croakers And Swift Croakers, James I. Rambo, Mary J. Youngquist
Word Ways
As readers of John G. Fuller's Games for Insomniacs (Doubleday, 1966) recall, Tom Swifties are sentences in which the adverb echoes the subject-matter of the quotation: "I can't drink any more pineapple juice," said Tom dolefully. In a February 1972 Word Ways article, J. A. Lindon showed several ways in which the classic Tom Swiftie could be generalized, all within the adverbial format.
Word Networks (Part 1), A. Ross Eckler
Word Networks (Part 1), A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Most logologists have noticed that some words, such as SHAME and SHARE, are relatively near each other, whereas others, such as TONIC and WATER, are far apart. If pressed for a definition of the distance between two words, they might suggest that it is equal to the number of letters that must be altered to transmute one word into the other. The nearer two words are to each other, the easier it is to accidentally change one into another by a typographical miscue. A large number of English words are only one letter apart, a situation humorously exploited for many …
Translingual Transposals, Darryl Francis
Translingual Transposals, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
The February 1973 issue of Word Ways contained a provocative article by Dmitri Borgmann, challenging logologists to pay more attention to classical topics of word play, such as transpositions, word squares and palindromes. Although a number of his suggestions would take a considerable effort to carry out, one challenge -- that of finding English words of ten or more letters which transpose into foreign words -- proved too much for us to resist. A few hours spent searching through easily available foreign-language dictionaries turned up the following specimens of ten to twelve letters in length.
Front Cover, Publication Information
Front Cover, Publication Information
Word Ways
Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents
Mcgovern Words, Darryl Francis
Mcgovern Words, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
For some while now, we have been building a file of new and nonce words that we come across in print. Our file currently runs from AGNEWISM to ZEDABETICAL. When we light on a word that we suspect is not in any dictionary, we first check it against various dictionaries, and then if our suspicion was correct we generate an entry in our file for the word concerned. Our file consists of filing cards measuring 5 inches by 3 inches, and on each is the word concerned, the source from which we took it, and the sentence in which the …
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 Onomastic Study (Part 1), Dmitri A. Borgmann
An Onomastic Study (Part 1), Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
This is an age of extreme specialization. No longer can the general practitioner of logology aspire to verbal immortality. Those who dedicate themselves to selected branches of the science stand a much better chance of reaching those fantastic heights of achievement that remain shrouded in an impenetrable fog for the general practitioner.
Watching And Weaving Woven Words, R. Robinson Rowe
Watching And Weaving Woven Words, R. Robinson Rowe
Word Ways
I have what some might call a despicable habit of seeing words within words, like spotting the COP in SCOPE or detecting the ART in GARRETS, but the habit is recreational. Noting in the latter that the inner word was spelled with the letters in the even-numbered positions while the odd letters GRES did not form a common word, I began looking for "woven words" for which both the even and the odd groups were interwoven words.
The New Resistance, B. A. Booper
The New Resistance, B. A. Booper
Word Ways
The reader of this paper might be tempted to think of it as a reply to Richard Noss's "Underground Transformer" (hereafter UT). Let him, then, for it is. Yet it is more, too. It is a glimpse at Truth through the mirror of error.
Your Logological Assets, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Your Logological Assets, Dmitri A. Borgmann
Word Ways
The ordinary individual has long regarded his name and address as his most prized logological possessions. They identify him, they locate him, they represent him -- in short, they are him. In keeping with the treatment accorded rare jewels, the average owner of a name and address has been understandably reluctant to subject them to indiscriminate and possibly injurious use by putting them on public display, by giving them out for the mere asking. Psychologically, this attitude harks back to primitive times, when there was felt to be magic in a name, so that a strange in possession of one's …
Answers And Solutions
Word Ways
Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.
Pied Poetry, Martin Gardner, J. A. Lindon
Instructions To Authors
Word Ways
Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.
City Slickers, Cherry Pickers, Leonard R. N. Ashley
City Slickers, Cherry Pickers, Leonard R. N. Ashley
Word Ways
The killer-diller word experts of Word Ways are invited to try their hands at this brief list of slang words. Most of them are fairly easy, but do try for exact definitions and to come as close to fifty right as possible.
Kickshaws, David L. Silverman
Kickshaws, David L. Silverman
Word Ways
Readers are encouraged to send their own favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Associate Editor. All answers appear in the Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.
A Literary Word-Sequence Debut, Judith Tarr Isquit
A Literary Word-Sequence Debut, Judith Tarr Isquit
Word Ways
The term word-chain is used when describing word series in which the last letter from one word repeats the beginning letter contained in its successor; for illustration, consider the phrase "shimmering, gleaming, glistening glow -- winter reigns, splendiferous snow" from Mary Youngquist's poem printed in an earlier Word Ways issue. Recently, John Muirhead (a Canadian reader) proposed the term word-sequence for word series in which adjacent word-pairs always have at least one common alphabetic letter. Not the similarity between word-sequences and overlapping word-progressions such as NUTS, SUIT, GIST, GILT, GOLD, LODE, DOPE, COPE or REMIND, LIMNED, DOLMEN, MELONS, AMOLES, MOLARS, …
Front Cover, Publication Information
Front Cover, Publication Information
Word Ways
Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents
Hidden Opposites, Mary J. Youngquist
Hidden Opposites, Mary J. Youngquist
Word Ways
A list of fifty short phrases is given below. In each phrase there are two hidden words which are opposites, or complements, of each other. For example, KITE GAVE can be rearranged to GIVE-TAKE. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.
Sight-Reading Substitution Ciphers, Jean C. Sabine
Sight-Reading Substitution Ciphers, Jean C. Sabine
Word Ways
The usual procedure when trying one's hand at a new craft is to undergo some kind of indoctrination before taking any action. The purpose of this article is to invite the reader, if he has little or no acquaintance with cryptography, to explore the potential of knowledge already in his possession. Instant linguistic recreation will result.
Rhyming Phenomena In English Words, Iris M. Tiedt
Rhyming Phenomena In English Words, Iris M. Tiedt
Word Ways
Investigations of English words and phrases have led scholars to the discovery of several rhyming phenomena as in such words as CRISSCROSS, POWWOW and BONBON. These types of rhyming were noted by Jespersen in his Modern English Grammar as well as Marchand in Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. The words fall in three groupings. consonantal rhymes, vowel rhymes, and repetition of the same syllable (or tautonyms). It is a real challenge to see how many of each you can discover.
Twelve-Letter Pair Pyramid Words, Ralph G. Beaman
Twelve-Letter Pair Pyramid Words, Ralph G. Beaman
Word Ways
In any logological research one is required, consciously or subconsciously, to devise and follow a set of rules for inclusion. The far outermost limits of such rules have been discussed several times in Word Ways. But the basic, starting rules have been virtually ignored. Let us choose a subject and see how the "rules for inclusion" will alter our allowable stock of words.
Acro-Crosswords, Walter Shedlofsky
Acro-Crosswords, Walter Shedlofsky
Word Ways
In "The Case of the Acro-Double", a short mystery story in the November 1972 Word Ways, the hero, Farley West, mentions a book by the murdered Guy Orient containing Anachuttles, Acro-Doubles, Acro-Triples and Acro-Crosswords. Word Ways readers are familiar with the first three constructions; in this article I introduce the concept of an Acro-Crossword.
Pocket Ghost, A. Ross Eckler
Pocket Ghost, A. Ross Eckler
Word Ways
Many Word Ways readers are familiar with the game of Ghost. In the two-man version of this game, players build sequentially toward a word by alternately adding terminal letters; the one who completes a word loses the game. After a player has added a letter to the sequence, his opponent can challenge him to produce a word starting with that sequence; if he can do so, the challenger loses the game, but if he cannot, the player challenged loses the game. Both players must agree beforehand on a dictionary of admissible words; ordinarily, words must be three or more letters …
Words With Two Pairs Of Like Letters, Darryl Francis
Words With Two Pairs Of Like Letters, Darryl Francis
Word Ways
Tucked away below the line in Webster's Second Edition is the word KJOEKKENMOEDDING, a Danish word from which kitchen midden is derived. This word is one of the very few beginning with the letters KJ which are listed by English dictionaries. Apart from this, the word is also notable for its two pairs of like letters, i.e. its pair of adjacent K's and its pair of adjacent D's.
A Scrabble Cube Problem, Josefa Byrne
A Scrabble Cube Problem, Josefa Byrne
Word Ways
The object of the game Scrabble Cubes is to use as many as possible of the fourteen letters in three minutes in a crossword puzzle arrangement. One shakes the cubes in a cup, spilling them out and using only the face-up letters. The score is figured as in Scrabble but without a board. Each letter has the same point value as in Scrabble (A=1, K=5, X=8, Z=10, etc.) but no bonus is given for seven letter words.
Logomachy
Word Ways
This column is devoted to various word games in which readers can match their wits against each other. Rules of play, if not given below, can be found in earlier Logomachy columns.