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

Digital Commons Network™

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

Linguistics

Discipline
Institution
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 3181 - 3210 of 5341

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

On Teaching Palindromes, Steven J. Chism Nov 1992

On Teaching Palindromes, Steven J. Chism

Word Ways

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines palindrome as "a word, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward as forward". As is often the case with limericks, sonnets, and other highly-structured but nowadays seldom-pursued literary creations, the few frequently-anthologized examples have come to be the only examples we know. This is certainly the case with the palindrome.

Go to article

Pygmalion: A Pappus Word Game, Jeremiah Farrell, David Wright Nov 1992

Pygmalion: A Pappus Word Game, Jeremiah Farrell, David Wright

Word Ways

The theorem of Pappus is a result from projective geometry about nine points and nine lines. It can be used as a basis for a word game similar to the game of David Silvermann using the word stockpile ARMY CHAT FISH GIRL HORN KNIT SOUP SWAN VOTE (A. Ross Eckler, "Word Recreations" (Dover Publications, 1979), p. 113).

Go to article

Climbing The White-House Ladder, Leonard Gordon Nov 1992

Climbing The White-House Ladder, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In a recent radio contest, Will Shortz asked for a Carrollian ladder with WHITE to HOUSE using all common words, and not allowing four-letter words pluralized with S. The Central ladder below is the solution he accepted. Lets see what one can do using less-common words form various dictionaries, or capitalized words.

Go to article

Greenwood Grammar, Douglas Greenwood Nov 1992

Greenwood Grammar, Douglas Greenwood

Word Ways

I don't know whether these (mostly) four-line verses of rhymed couplets deserve to be called recreational linguistics - but it has been fun comping them! There are many more figures of speech which could have been similarly treated; perhaps other Word Ways readers would care to try. These quatrains have the named figure of speech built in as an example: I hope the additional commons don't belabor the point too much. My thanks to the editor for improvements on some of the verses.

Go to article

Colloquy Nov 1992

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Go to article

X-X Word Update, Jeff Grant Nov 1992

X-X Word Update, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

The letter X has always fascinated people. It represents that unknown, the indefinable, the mysterious. An X may be used to designate a kiss, a ten-dollar bill, a type of chromosome, and a strength of ale, as well as a person's signature, a mistake, hybridity, and a movie rating. The X-Lexicon is an unpublished collection of approximately three thousand terms beginning with X (there are 486 solid-form X-words in the Air Force list of Webster's Second Edition). To further illustrate its comprehensiveness, the X-Lexicon contains 376 terms starting xanth-, from Xanthaea to xanthylium.

Go to article

Siamese Triplets, Peter Newby Nov 1992

Siamese Triplets, Peter Newby

Word Ways

Alongside is a nine-letter word example of my latest development in the technique of the insertion/deletion. As many long words consist of two or more simple words, one can, by considering these elements independently, bring into the realm of wordplay many long words otherwise denied standard treatment. Beauty of presentation is maintained by restricting all actions to within the confines of a rectangle, though other possibilities will be mentioned later. For convenience, therefore, I will refer to the original example as a rectangular triplet.

Go to article

Barcelona, Darryl Francis Nov 1992

Barcelona, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Summer, 1992: the World Olympics, Numerous hours of televised sport, early in the morning; throughout the day and evening, set watching hours of physical action, how about giving yourself some mental exercise?

Go to article

Gulf War Communiques, Howard Richler Nov 1992

Gulf War Communiques, Howard Richler

Word Ways

During the Gulf War, all official commiques were written in English. Unlike Indo-European languages, Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic are written from right to left.

Go to article

Titles To Trace, Christopher Mcmanus Nov 1992

Titles To Trace, Christopher Mcmanus

Word Ways

We are proud of our unparalleled collection of specialized encyclopedias. We are now trying to trace the whereabouts of the following lost volumes. Can you help complete our sets?

Go to article

The End Of The Word: J, Dan Tilque Nov 1992

The End Of The Word: J, Dan Tilque

Word Ways

The letter J is the second least common last letter in English, exceeded in rarity only by Q. Words ending in J are sufficiently rare that it is feasible to compile a list of all such words.

Go to article

Mother Of Anagrams, Susan Thorpe Nov 1992

Mother Of Anagrams, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

Some mothers, as we all know, have definite delusions of grandeur and have to be brought gently down to earth. Endeavoring to distract my mother's attention from her latest "bete noir", I used a colloquialism when I said "DIG MENSA, MA", while explaining to her the round table organisation for people with high IQs.

Go to article

-Gry Words In The Oed, A. Ross Eckler Nov 1992

-Gry Words In The Oed, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Now that the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is available on the Cd-Rom (see review elsewhere in this issue), and phrase ending in -GRY is that august work - and, at the same time, check the diligence of those who previously mined out these words by hand. There are, in fact, only seven words not previously spotted in the OED by Word Ways researchers; these are labeled with + below. One of these, UNAGRY, was noted in another dictionary. Five are variants or compounds based on ANGRY and HUNGRY: NANGRY, LAND-HUNGRY, LEATHER-HUNGRY, MAN-HUNGRY, AND YEARD-HUNGRY. The last one, …

Go to article

Chit-Chat And Bibble-Babble, Leonard R. N. Ashley Nov 1992

Chit-Chat And Bibble-Babble, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

"Baa-baa" goes the sheep, "gusy-gusy" used to mean "macho", and birds go "tweet-tweet". I trust you will not be shattered, like "Humpty-Dumpty", by these request for reduplication.

Go to article

Kickshaws, David Morice Nov 1992

Kickshaws, David Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Go to article

Answers And Solutions Nov 1992

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

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

Go to article

Instructions To Authors Nov 1992

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to Word Ways.

Go to article

Some Conventional Anagrams, Mike Morton Nov 1992

Some Conventional Anagrams, Mike Morton

Word Ways

Abstract unavailable.

Go to article

Foursquares:Four Letter Word Fun, Don Morrison Nov 1992

Foursquares:Four Letter Word Fun, Don Morrison

Word Ways

The four-letter words in this article are neither offensive nor vulgar, and for the most part do not relate to excrement or copulation. This disavowal is made up front so that you won't waste time looking for the nonexistent X-rated words.

Go to article

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 25 Issue 4 Nov 1992

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 25 Issue 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Go to article

The Ugliest Words In English, A. Ross Eckler Nov 1992

The Ugliest Words In English, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

More than twenty years ago, Wilfred Funk proposed chimes, dawn, golden , hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring and tranquil as the ten most beautiful words of the English language. More recently, Willard Espy generated gonorrhea, gossamer, lullaby, meandering, mellifluous, murmuring, onomatopoeia, Shenandoah, summer after and wisteria for the "Book of Lists #2" (1980).

Go to article

Hispanic Los Aguelos And Puebo Tsave-Yohs, Thomas J. Steele Sj Sep 1992

Hispanic Los Aguelos And Puebo Tsave-Yohs, Thomas J. Steele Sj

SHRI Publications

The working paper discusses a Christmas fable tradition in New Mexico known as Los Aguelos to the Hispanics and Tsave-Yohs to the pueblo inhabitants. It also discusses the various linguistics used by different tribes.

Go to article

One Sup Honor Thyme, Peter Newby Aug 1992

One Sup Honor Thyme, Peter Newby

Word Ways

No abstract available.

Go to article

I Love To Be Squoze, Mary Christie Craig Aug 1992

I Love To Be Squoze, Mary Christie Craig

Word Ways

In early April 1992, out local newspaper carried a syndicated piece titled "Best of the Worst Country Song Titles" by Mike Harden.

Go to article

The Poet's Corner Aug 1992

The Poet's Corner

Word Ways

From time to time, Word Ways receives a variety of short poems related to recreational linguistics, some original, other previously published. As poetic output cannot be easily predicted, these will be presented on an irregular basis.

Go to article

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 25 Number 3 Aug 1992

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 25 Number 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Go to article

Reflexicons, Lee Sallows Aug 1992

Reflexicons, Lee Sallows

Word Ways

A lexicon is a dictionary or a list of words. Hence my use of "reflexive lexicon" or, more crisply, reflexicon, for a self-descriptive word list that describes its own own letter frequencies:

Go to article

Colloquy Aug 1992

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Go to article

On Pruning Trees For Pangrams, Leonard Gordon Aug 1992

On Pruning Trees For Pangrams, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In the February and May issues of Word Ways, Lee Sallows describes how he constructed a pangram machine (a special-purpose digital computer) to discover self-referential sentences of the form "This sentence contains five a's, two b's, ... and one z", after he realized that the program he had written for a general-purpose digital computer would trake 31.7 million years to run. There's no doubt that building the pangram machine was a personally satisfying accomplishment -- although I am afraid that it became his Galatea.

Go to article

Ann Owed, Hugh Denham Aug 1992

Ann Owed, Hugh Denham

Word Ways

I have been asked to right a ballad about a Laud of the Manna, Col. P. Riley of Great Holkham. As my spelling is sometimes a bit shaky, I ran my composition through the spelling check on the word processor; fortunately the programme did know discover any mistakes:

Go to article

First Prev Next Last