Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Linguistic

Discipline
Institution
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type

Articles 391 - 420 of 921

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Answers And Solutions Nov 2003

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Go to article

Letter Banks From The Chemical Elements, Darryl Francis Nov 2003

Letter Banks From The Chemical Elements, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

This article returns to one of our favorite themes, the names of the chemical elements. We started by taking the names of the chemical elements, running from hydrogen (atomic number 1) to meitnerium (atomic number 109). We included some variant spellings (e.g., sulphur, sulphur) and variant names (e.g., for elements with atomic numbers 104-109).

Go to article

Kickshaws, Dave Morice Nov 2003

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Go to article

An A To Z Of Ten-Squares, Rex Gooch Nov 2003

An A To Z Of Ten-Squares, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

There have been many discussions over the years on how to make ten-squares, including what kind of words are best suited. A review of all these ideas against the words in my 2000+ squares would be very lengthy, so I provide here some raw material for readers to do this if they wish. At the same time, it will be of wider interest to publish further reasonable examples to add to the four best I have already published.

Go to article

Back Cover Nov 2003

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Go to article

Shiftgrams Ciphered, Analyzed, Richard Sabey Nov 2003

Shiftgrams Ciphered, Analyzed, Richard Sabey

Word Ways

A list of the shiftwords or shiftgrams in some word stock, classified by the amount of shift, such as Leonard Gordon's "Letter-shift Words in the OSPD" (WW 3.1990-61), shows that some shifts produce more word pairs than others. To get some insight as to why, this article surveys the whole stock of shiftwords and shiftgrams of words of lengths 3-12 from a specified word stock, before going on to analyze words of some specified lengths in further depth.

Go to article

Caroline And Chums, Rex Gooch Nov 2003

Caroline And Chums, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

Readers may notice the new official name of the town in which I live, the change taking place in 2003, 100 years after the founding of the world's first Garden City (I formerly lived outside the world's second, Welwyn Garden City: both were founded by Enenezer Howard).

Go to article

Strike While The Irony Is Hot: Humorous Proverbs, Don Hauptman Aug 2003

Strike While The Irony Is Hot: Humorous Proverbs, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

One of my pet linguistic peeves is the widespread misuse of the adjective proverbial. Consider a recent example, from a magazine profile of a government whistleblower: "When she grabs hold of something, she is like the proverbial dog with a bone in its teeth." Of course, this expression is not a proverb; it's a metaphor or simile. Or, less charitably, a cliche or bromide.

Go to article

Shiftgrams: Spangled Wordplay, Richard Sabey Aug 2003

Shiftgrams: Spangled Wordplay, Richard Sabey

Word Ways

To form a shiftgram of a word, two operations are performed. First, it is enciphered using a shiftcipher, which replaces each letter by the letter n places further on in the alphabet. The result is then transposed to form a word. Howard Bergerson introduced shiftgrams in "Sea-changed Words" (WW 2.1969-24). In "Shiftgrams" (WW 2.1980-22). Tom Pulliam gave more examples and called the operation an n-shift.

Go to article

Colloquy Aug 2003

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Go to article

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 36 Issue 3 Aug 2003

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 36 Issue 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Go to article

Lighter And Heavier, Susan Thorpe Aug 2003

Lighter And Heavier, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The weight of a word is determined by assigning A=1, B=2 through Z=26 and adding the letter values together. The density, or average letter value, of a word is found by dividing its weight by the number of letters in the word. Words with a low density are 'lightweight' words; those with a high density are 'heavyweight' words.

Go to article

Kickshaws, David Morice Aug 2003

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Go to article

Medical Flowers, Horticultural Ailments, William E. Brandt Jr. Aug 2003

Medical Flowers, Horticultural Ailments, William E. Brandt Jr.

Word Ways

Looking through a gardening magazine, I noticed that the names of some of the plants sounded like diseases. Conversely, many medical conditions sound like the names of flowers or plants.

Go to article

Dictionary Words, Leonard R. N. Ashley Aug 2003

Dictionary Words, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Compiling a dictionary of a very many words that are not in the dictionary - mine is a dictionary of sexual slang - I naturally reflected on the words that do ordinarily get published. Most people say the average lexicons include too many useless "dictionary words" and by that they mean that you never hear or even read such words, that the words are only for lexicographers (and take up space in the lexicon that could better be used by words that are censored or squeezed out now although they are found in everyday use).

Go to article

Importunate Permutation: Aphorstical Parochialist, Stuart Kidd Aug 2003

Importunate Permutation: Aphorstical Parochialist, Stuart Kidd

Word Ways

The title and appellation above illustrate the apposite felicity in felicitous apposition of transposals in sets. Anil, Richard Lederer and Susan Thorpe among others, have looked at this area either directly or tangentially in these pages in recent years. My purpose here is to present a robus but necessarily subjective presentation of many curious, delightful, absurd and otherwise interesting examples of the genre.

Go to article

Fibonacci Words Aug 2003

Fibonacci Words

Word Ways

In the November 2002 Kickshaws, Dave Morice introduced the idea of using the Fibonacci sequence to generate all 676 bigrams in fourteen closed loops. Ross Eckler in the current issue points out the lovely symmetry and underlying mathematics of the fascinating pattern Dave found. Dave also noted several words embedded in six of the loops, mostly three-letter words with three of four letters.

Go to article

The Speculation Puzzle, Jeremiah Farrell Aug 2003

The Speculation Puzzle, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

The SPECULATION puzzle is an (11,3) word configuration using the eleven words OUI, PUN, UTE, COP, LOT, SIC, LIP, SAL, TAN, ACE, and SEN. The puzzle is to arrange the words on the eleven nodes of the graph so that every "line" of three (either on a straight line segment or on the eleven nodes of the graph) so that every "line" of three (either on a straight line segment or on an arc) contains three words with a single letter in common. See "Puzzles and Games on Word Configurations" in the November 2001 issue of Word Ways for details …

Go to article

Text With Each Word Used Just Once, A. Ross Eckler Aug 2003

Text With Each Word Used Just Once, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Doug Nufer's Never Again, a novel of approximately 40 thousand words, is by far the longest text in which no word is repeated. In the Feb 1995 Word Ways I published a two-hundred-word essay on this topic, using each word only once, and noted that H.J. Verschuyl had created a document of similar length in Dutch, reprinted in Battus's Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde (Querido, 1981). The longest-known accidental text is a 66-word window from Rudyard Kipling's "Brother Square-Toes" in Rewards and Fairies, reported by Mike Keith in the Nov 2002 Word Ways.

Go to article

Back Cover Aug 2003

Back Cover

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Go to article

Hypersyllabic And Oligosyllabic Words, Hugo Brandt Corstius Aug 2003

Hypersyllabic And Oligosyllabic Words, Hugo Brandt Corstius

Word Ways

Syllables in Dutch words have an average length of three letters. When a word has 48 letters, like thoraxchirugenconcurrentieverhoudingencommissie, we expect it to have 16 syllables. But logophiles are not interested in averages, they long for extreme cases. How long, and how short, can a Dutch word of seven syllables be? The longest lemma in the Dictionary of the Nederlandic Language (1882-1999) is handboogschuttersmaatschappij (29 letters). It has the same number of syllables as the 12-letter word operationele.

Go to article

Singularly Imperfect Tautonyms, Susan Thorpe Aug 2003

Singularly Imperfect Tautonyms, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Singularly Imperfect Tautonyms (SITS for short) are what I call words like NIGHTLIGHT in which a single letter in the second half of the word differs from the letters in the corresponding position in the first half of the word. Thus a single letter prevents NIGHTLIGHT from being a tautonym (NIGHTNIGHT). The SIT MENDMENT is prevented by a single letter from being a tautonymic sequence, rather than a tautonym, MENDMEND not being a word. For the purpose of this article, I do not distinguish between these two types of SITS. As a genre, SITS are only to be found amongst …

Go to article

Number-Names Revisited, Rex Gooch Aug 2003

Number-Names Revisited, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

This revision upgrades one area of the original article, published on pages 83-90 of the May 2003 issue of Word Ways, and clarifies another area.

Go to article

600 Transposals Of Uk Place Names, Darryl Francis Aug 2003

600 Transposals Of Uk Place Names, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The May 1990 issue of Word Ways carried an article of mine entitled "London Wordplay". This was an examination of transposals, transadditions, beheadments and a variety of other wordplay based on place names in and around London, England.

Go to article

Vowel Tetragrams Revisited, Susan Thorpe Aug 2003

Vowel Tetragrams Revisited, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

A Vowel Tetragram (VT) is a group of 4 vowels unbroken by any consonants. There are 625 different VTs (125 beginning with each of A, E, I, O, and U), ranging from AAA, AAAE through UUUO, UUU. Words which contain a VT can be called Vowel Tetragram Words (VTWs). Relatively few words in current everyday usage include a VT. AQUEOUS, QUEUE, ONOMATOPOEIA, COOEE, HAWAIIAN and SEQUOIA are perhaps the most familiar.

Go to article

Aeiou: 120 Known Human Beings, Eric Chaikin Aug 2003

Aeiou: 120 Known Human Beings, Eric Chaikin

Word Ways

Supervocalies are words or phrases with AEIOU once each, and no Ys. This is the first of a 3-part series examining complete sets of supervocalic people, places and things. The goal was to find known human beings - reasonably famous supervocalic people - for each of the 120 ordering of AEIOU. After copious amounts of Google searching, the feat has been accomplished.

Go to article

The Heptcat's Other Trick, Jim Puder Aug 2003

The Heptcat's Other Trick, Jim Puder

Word Ways

In the February 2003 Word Ways, the HeptCat Perspicuous Palindrome Producer was introduced as a device for the semi-automatic generation of over 200 billion different palindromic sentences. But that is not the HeptCat's only palindromical talent; this cat of seven segments also has the latent ability to engender indefinitely long, grammatical, multi-sentence passages that are end-to-end palindromes.

Go to article

Never Again, Doug Nuffer Aug 2003

Never Again, Doug Nuffer

Word Ways

This is the title of a novel of approximately 40,000 words in which no word is repeated; the full test can be found on ubu.com/contemp/nufer.pdf. It relates the adventures of George Raymond ("When the racetrack closed forever I had to get a job" is the first sentence). The book is filled with vivid word-pictures using language reminiscent of James Joyce.

Go to article

Nine-Square Round-Up, Rex Gooch Aug 2003

Nine-Square Round-Up, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

This article briefly surveys previous findings, then presents new quality nine-squares. Next, it presents squares with diagonal words to add to those previously published by me. Finally, it looks at the most popular top row words, and also at the most popular words in any position.

Go to article

Answers And Solutions Aug 2003

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Go to article

First Prev Next Last