Digital Commons Network^™

Irish Bulls, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

An Irish bull, or simply a bull, is a ludicrous language blunder: an illogical, absurd, and/or amusing mistake - especially one that is paradoxical or self-contradictory. Some dictionaries take a casual approach to Irish bulls, defining them but omitting actual examples.

Quelque Chose, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

Kickshaws is currently being assembled by a series of guest editors. All contributions should be sent to the editor in Morristown, New Jersey.

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Back cover, including instructions to authors who wish to contribute to Word Ways

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 20 Number 1

Word Ways

Publication information including table of contents.

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 at least one month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

Applications Of Syntax And Pragmatics To Research In Writing., Kathryn Louise Riley

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Researchers in writing have expressed disillusionment with transformational-generative syntax over the past decade. Such disillusionment is caused partly by the different research goals and assumptions about language held by researchers in syntax and those in writing, and partly by unrealistic expectations about the pedagogical usefulness of syntactic theory. However, rather than abandoning the study of linguistics, writing specialists may benefit by reexamining the relation between their field and that of linguistics. First, researchers in writing should distinguish more clearly between applied research and pedagogy. Syntactic theory can be used to explain and analyze certain structural phenomena in student writing, even …

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 19, Number 4

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Vanity Of Vanities, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

I happened to be driving down the road recently when a bright red sports car went by bearing the vanity license plate 4 MY EGO. Then and there came a dazzling revelation: the whole subject of vanity license plates as a vehicle for wordplay has recieved very little attention from logologists.

Verbal Hypertension, David Morice

Word Ways

By expanding the number of English verb tenses, we can express our temporal experiences more precisely. Beyond the old-fashioned Future Perfect ("I will have walked") lie new tenses just waiting for us to go boldly where no grammarian has gone before.

Some New Long Transposals, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Over the years Word Ways has published numerous transposals, groups of words such as CARTHORSE/ORCHESTRA and TRANSPIRE/TERRAPINS. Recently I went on a transposal-finding spree, setting myself the target of finding exactly one hundred new sets of transposals involving words of ten or more letters.

The First Double And Triple Acrostics, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Double and triple acrostics occupy an important niche in the history of word puzzles, it is generally recognized that they were the predecessors to the crossword puzzle. For those unfamiliar with the genre, a double acrostic consists of clues for a sequence of words (the cross-lights) to be written in a list, plus two clues to the words spelled out by the first and last letters of the cross-lights (the uprights). In a triple acrostic a third upright is formed out of interior letters in the cross-lights. The cross-lights may consist of words of varying lengths, but the uprights are …

Letter Perfect, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Many logologists have noted that most of the letters in our alphanet sound like English words. To take four example, CUE and QUEUE sound like the letter Q, ARE sounds like R, EWE, YOU and YEW sound like the letter U, and WHY sounds like Y.

End Play, Faith W. Eckler

Word Ways

You are working on a crossword puzzle and the grid shows _EAR. Without an additional clue you would not know whether the missing letter was a B, D, F, G, H, L, N, P, R, S, T or W. All this proves is that many English words have similar contructions with only one letter different, a fact exploited by certain prize puzzle constructors who devise fiendishly clever puzzles which appear to have two or more correct answers. Only by following their tortuous logic can you divine the acceptable solution.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles in this issue along with instructions to authors.

On The Table, Henri Picciotto

Word Ways

Although I hope it is not too easy, this cryptic crossword is elementary.

Genealogic, David Morice

Word Ways

FATHER, MOTHER, and a few other genealogical words (DAD, MOM, POP, MA, PA, GRANDFATHER, GRANDMOTHER, etc.) have the unusual property of generating sentences that are true or false, depending on the number of words used and how they are read.

English And What Does She Mean?, Charlton Lawrence Edholm

Word Ways

I had just been reading an impassioned denunciation of one more attempt to force a simplified system of spelling down the throat of a long-suffering public. All my literary sympathies were engaged in the phrase "The noble old language of Chaucer and Shakespeare is sufficiantly simplified for us" when a newly-landed friend from Berlin approached and began his daily course in "English and What does She Mean?"

A Verse Of Necromancy, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

"Lieutenant Arthur Jamison." A stocky middle-aged man with black hair streaked with gray looked up at me.

I handed him my card. "Miss Rose Anderson said you had no objection if I discussed with you the disappearance of her fiance, Homer Rosswell."

Kickshaws, Murray Pearce

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

A Name Game, Leonard R.N. Ashley

Word Ways

When I was at Princeton, we called it the Princeton Name Game and argued that the challenge was to invent a name that would completely conquer the admissions director and gain the bearer instant acceptance.

The Albatros In Ferdinand Bolstraat, Rudy Kousbroek

Word Ways

Editor's Note: The following story, the second chapter of de logologische Ruimte (Meulenhoff, 1984), exhibits the odd juxtapositions that result from transaddition (adding letters to a word and rearranging to form another word).

The Palindromes Of Mangareva, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Mangareva is the largest of the Gambier Islands, a small group situated within the Tuamotu Archipelago in the the eastern Pacific. The Islands were discovered by Captain Wilson of the "Duff" on 25 May 1797, and he named them after the British naval commander Admiral Lord Gambier.

The Only Man Infinity Fears, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

John Candelaria of Yucaipa, California is a man who leads two lives. At work he is a mild-mannered Clark Kent, scientific illustrator and surveyor at Caltrans (occuped with traffic-flow studies and highway planning); at home, he becomes the man of steel, effortlessly vaulting past such mega-numbers as the googol (one followed by one hundred zeros) the googolplex (ten raised to the googol power), Archimedes' number (one followed by 80 quadrillion zeros, and Graham's number (a number so immense that it takes a page of specially-invented notation to define it).

The Most Fecund Consonyms, Dana Richards

Word Ways

Words that have the same pattern of consonants, such as BeTRaY and oBiTuaRY, euTHaNaSia and aTHeNS, SPoNGe and eSPioNaGe, KNoW and oKiNaWa, iCHNeuMoN and CHiNaMan, and oRCHeSTRa and RoCHeSTeR, are known as consonyms.

Pneumonoultramicrostuff, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

In 1932, Frank Scully wrote Fun In Bed, a book of light-hearted anecdotes and puzzles for the diversion and amusement of the hospitalized patient.

Four Byte Word Text News, John Henrick

Word Ways

Had he been a novelist, rather than a lyricist, Cole Porter might never have made the musical claim that contemporary novelists use only four-letter words in their writings. Whether the assertion is viewed as prevarication or exaggeration, one thing is clear. No known novel, present or past, has the characteristic proclaimed in "Anything Goes."

Paul Alan Cox And Joel C. Janetski's Review Of Patrick Vinton Kirch's The Evolution Of The Polynesian Chiefdoms, Paul Alan Cox, Joel C. Janetski

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Conceptual Analysis And The Virtues And Vices Of Professor Westen’S Linguistics, Timothy P. Terrell

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Cover And Publication Information - Volume 19, Number 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.