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"The Whole Kettle Of Fish In A Nutshell": Mixed Metaphors Redux, Don Hauptman May 2004

"The Whole Kettle Of Fish In A Nutshell": Mixed Metaphors Redux, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

In our previous episode on the subject, "Ironing the Bugs Out: Mixed Metaphors" (Word Ways, August 2001), I recounted egregious and amusing real-life illustrations of this popular solecism.

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The Movie Star Behind The Presidents, Dave Morice, Monte J. Zerger May 2004

The Movie Star Behind The Presidents, Dave Morice, Monte J. Zerger

Word Ways

Harrison Ford is a movie star of the first magnitude. Whether he knows it or not, he's also a wordplay star. His name, his movies, and his life connect him, in one or more ways, to all the American presidents but one. Perhaps more than any other person in the history of the Republic, he is presidential, so much so that several websites promoted him for president in 2000.

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Straight Down The Middle, Susan Thorpe May 2004

Straight Down The Middle, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

So sang Bing Crosby. In the current context, however, it describes the chopping of a word into two halves, each half with the same number of letters. Hence only words with an even number of letters can be considered. The letters of the first half and second half, respectively, of a parent word are rearranged to make two new words, the offspring.

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Cheater's Selfish-Synonymy May 2004

Cheater's Selfish-Synonymy

Word Ways

The February issue (WW 04-45) gave the results of my systematic search for coincidental self-synonymy: pairs of words that are unrelated etymologically but via convergent evolution happen to be spelled the same and c. mean the same. I extended the coverage to near-synonymic pairs as well and to unrelated contronymic (self-opposite) pairs.

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Can All Words Be Expressed As Sumagrams?, Daniel Austin May 2004

Can All Words Be Expressed As Sumagrams?, Daniel Austin

Word Ways

At the place where mathematics and the world of anagrams overlap, many interesting phenomena arise, as regular readers of Word Ways are frequently reminded. Undoubtedly the most famous example is the anagram ELEVEN PLUS TWO = TWELVE PLUS ONE discovered by Melvin Wellman over half a century ago, with equality both mathematically and as an anagram. Two more of these appeared in Word Ways in 1992. They are Spanish examples by Lee Sallows: CATORCE + UNO = ONCE + CUATRO and DOCE + TRES = TRECE + DOS.

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Neologisms For The New Millennium, Ove Michaelsen May 2004

Neologisms For The New Millennium, Ove Michaelsen

Word Ways

My friend Lois Fischer refers to a one-sided conversation as a unisation. Another friend once suggested that affluential describes influence obtained by affluence. The filling of a book by negative reviews or poor promotion could be referred to as bibliocide. Comedic suicide could be called self-induced comicide. The act of home-wrecking could be a case of domicide.

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Us Presidents: Transadditions, Rex Gooch May 2004

Us Presidents: Transadditions, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Darryl Francis (W2004-25) requests transadditions of the names of eight US Presidents. There are many to choose from in each case, apart from McKinley; but this is counter-balanced by the statement of Harrison's policies, and some connections to other Presidents.

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Reg, Or Roger?, John E. Connett May 2004

Reg, Or Roger?, John E. Connett

Word Ways

Reg and Roger are twins, not identical, but two sides of the same coin.

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Spelling It Out, Leonard R. N. Ashley May 2004

Spelling It Out, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Here is some amusing wordplay. Forget "A as in Apple" and "X as in Xylophone" when people perhaps annoyingly, ask you to spell out a name. Maybe you could get by with alpha, Bravo,, and so on, but why not entertain (or exasperate) with one of the two following systems?

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Onomastic Puns, Robert M. Rennick May 2004

Onomastic Puns, Robert M. Rennick

Word Ways

By far the most popular form of word play is the pun. Linguists who prefer big words call his paronomasia. What it boils down to is a word, phrase, or idiomatic expression with more than one meaning, or two words with the same sound but different meanings. The humor comes when you expect a word to mean something but it turns out unexpectedly to mean something else.

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Answers And Solutions May 2004

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles and games contained in this issue.

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Back Cover May 2004

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

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Kickshaws, Dave Morice May 2004

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

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Run For The Biggest Word May 2004

Run For The Biggest Word

Word Ways

Much has been written in Word Ways about the longest word. I've asked the question differently and come up with an answer that is far removed from those giant but unmemorable chemical and medical terms logologists are so fond of. The latter might make up a few lines in the dictionary, but the biggest word in my dictionary. Macquarie Australian Dictionary, Revised 3rd Edition 2001 (M), takes up more than a page. And the answer is ...RUN! Two other words exceed one page, GO and TAKE. The value of this exercise is to note which words are the richest - …

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Renaming The Schwar(T)Zkopf Baby, Eric Chaikin Feb 2004

Renaming The Schwar(T)Zkopf Baby, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

DEBORAH GLUPCZYNSKI does not need to repeat herself. There she is in all her glory - a doctor from western Massachusetts - 18 letters, no repeats, and a new record for a real person's name. She surpasses the previous record holder, dearly departed 17-letter MELVIN SCHWARZKOPF, formerly of Illinois. This discovery begs some important questions in the exciting field of heterogrammic onomastics - the study of names which do not repeat a letter. (The term heterogram - a word with no repeated letters - refers to a word in which all letters appear the same number of times.) These questions …

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Fictitious Names, Robert M. Rennick Feb 2004

Fictitious Names, Robert M. Rennick

Word Ways

In the early 1950s, when i was an undergraduate at a certain midwestern university, one of the favorite pasttimes of my fellow students and me was the making of names. But we weren't content to stop there; we had to convince each other, and the authorities, that these names identified real persons. As blatant as this sounds, we would go to considerable lengths to enroll our creations in classes, student clubs and athletic teams, and we even offered them as prom queen (and king) candidates and nominated them for honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. We submitted lists of these …

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Colloquy Feb 2004

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

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Sounding Of The Pun: The Official Spoonerism Game, Don Hauptman Feb 2004

Sounding Of The Pun: The Official Spoonerism Game, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

In my semi-definitive but now tragically out-of-print spoonerism book Cruel and Unusual Puns, I spoke somewhat disparagingly of a familiar type of the children's riddle. Example: What's the difference between a church bell and a burglar? One peals from the steeple: the other steals from the people.

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Some Sentential Palindromic Five-Squares, Jim Puder Feb 2004

Some Sentential Palindromic Five-Squares, Jim Puder

Word Ways

The oldest word square on record, the famed SATOR-AREPO-TENET-OPERA-ROTAS square known form at least three widely separated Roman Empire sites, is also a palindromic square; that is, its five words, when read in order in any direction, form a letter-unit palindrome.

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Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 37 Issue 1 Feb 2004

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 37 Issue 1

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

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Compass Roses, Rex Gooch Feb 2004

Compass Roses, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Compass roses were invented by Christopher McManus in W2003-231. I found them pleasing to look at and challenging to do. He had a little difficulty with some of the words in the 9-compass: there are myriads of these in a large dictionary, through finding common 3-letter words to fit is a little difficult. The first 9-roses uses purely OED solid headwords, but has a repeat. The second consists of OED solid headwords, though Wiskinkie and Sasak for proper nouns.

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A Magical Pair Of 6x6 Chemical Squares, Mike Keith Feb 2004

A Magical Pair Of 6x6 Chemical Squares, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The two 6x6 squares below contain 72 distinct entries from the periodic table of the elements, chosen from among the 110 which have been assigned official names by the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry). Each small square displays the standard abbreviation and atomic number of its element.

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The Fine Art Of Misspelling, Dave Morice Feb 2004

The Fine Art Of Misspelling, Dave Morice

Word Ways

I have never misspelled a word in my life. I've tried to do it many times, but who can consciously misspell a word? Once I tried misspelling DOG. I typed DAHG, careful not to hit the O key instead of the A and the H. But since I intended to spell it that way, I didn't spell it. I merely succeeded in spelling an unconventional variant of it. If I had accidentally typed DOG, then i would've spelled DAHG. So I tried to purposely misspell DAHG instead of DOG, and it worked! I typed DOG. But no, it didn't work. …

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Transdeleted And Transadded Presidents, Darryl Francis Feb 2004

Transdeleted And Transadded Presidents, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Take the surnames of the US presidents. For each one, what is the longest transdeletion and what is the shortest transaddition? Jim Puder posed and answered these problems in the August 1998 Word Ways. The November 1998 Colloquy contained a healthy response to Puder's article, improving on several of the words offered.

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The World Of Agamemnons, Susan Thorpe Feb 2004

The World Of Agamemnons, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Agamemnon words are so-called because, like AGAMEMNON, they are made of three different 3-letter palindromic groups. To date, 10 such words have appeared in Word Ways: AJANENSIS, MIMULUSES, COCACEAE, ILICACEAE, SUSUHUNAN, MIMICISMS, NANNONAIA, ANALALAVA, MOMBEBACA and AGAMEMNON itself. Their details can be found on page 218 of the August 2001 issue of Word Ways. Here I offer a further 60 agamemnon words.

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Coincidental Self-Synonymy Feb 2004

Coincidental Self-Synonymy

Word Ways

The February 2003 Kickshaws (03-54) defined self-synonymy as two synonyms - if any exist that are spelled the same but are unrelated etymologically. David Silverman in an earlier Kickshaws (74-108) stated that if two words are homographic (and homophonic) synonyms they must be the same word. This seemingly obvious dictum would be refuted by a self-synonym pair. They're the same but not same. David Morice compared this idea to a linguistic Mobius strip. Schizograms is another apt name for such split personalities, but that coinage I reserve for coincidental contronyms (part III), where it applies doubly.

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Vowel Sequences, Rex Gooch Feb 2004

Vowel Sequences, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

This article examines "runs" of the vowels a, e, i, o, u, in words and phrases. An example is proeuious (modern previous), which is counted as a run in six vowels. To save space, the level of detail given diminishes as the number of examples increases. Where the words themselves are not given, the results are unverified, and it may be assumed that a few instances will be of poor transliterations, or be otherwise unacceptable. This will greatly affect the conclusions.

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Name Droppings Feb 2004

Name Droppings

Word Ways

In the November 1994 Kickshaws Peter Newby introduced a style of punning on well-known names of the form "Was Franchot Ton deaf? Was Vincent Price conscious?", calling them logomotives. Here's my three cents worth (would Lotte Lenya threepenny)?

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Aeiou In Order - Again!, Darryl Francis Feb 2004

Aeiou In Order - Again!, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Popular word puzzle lore has it that there are only two relatively common words having the five vowels AEIOU appearing once each and in order: ABSTEMIOUS and FACETIOUS. Over a dozen other such words and terms were logged in Language on Vacation and pre-1998 issue of Word Ways. The number of such AEIOU words jumped dramatically in February 1998, though, with the publication of SUsan Thorpe's article, "AEIOU in Order". Susan's article brought together the previously published AEIOU words, many new finds in Webster's Second Edition and the Oxford English Dictionary, plus many culled from the pages of biological references. …

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Unspeakably Absurd (A Is For, Well, Apple...), Ross West Feb 2004

Unspeakably Absurd (A Is For, Well, Apple...), Ross West

Word Ways

The use of "the_-word" in place of the unspeakable or unprintable crashed through a threshold during the 1988 presidential race. Candidate Bush - not W, but G.H.W. - famously leveled and fired both barrels at opponent Mike Dukakis, accusing him of a willingness to raise the T-word (taxes), as well as labeling him with the graded L-word (liberal). The press corps gushed oceans of ink documenting the usage, decoding the former CIA chief's meanings and speculating on how these jibed with his political V-word, vision.

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