Digital Commons Network^™

Occupational Hazards, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

Nobody gets fired anymore. They are now victims of 'involuntary resignations' or 'temporary cutbacks' or 'job classification eliminations' ... or any of a dozen other euphemistic descriptions for summary dismissal.

In the continuing search for newer, softer, more ambiguous terms with which to deliver the final blow to unsatisfactory workers, some industries are digging into their own terminology. Thus a Yellow Pages employee on the way out may be 'declassified', 'unlisted' or 'disconnected'. A deposed nobleman may be 'discounted', 'distributed' or subjected to 'delivery'.

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.

Two Interpreters, John Mcclellan

Word Ways

The old-time interpreters were concerned with the meaning of dreams, as demonstrated by the biblical story of Joseph at Pharaoh's court, or the interpretation of the flights of birds preceding an important battle. Nowadays it is questionable whether 'interpreter' is the proper word for the intermediary between two persons speaking different tongues. Certainly, a VIP experiencing linguistic difficulties wants, primarily, a translator -- he prefers to interpret the verbal exchange himself. If this term is unsatisfactory, 'word-man' is equally so. There would be an immediate outcry from the distaff side, pointing out the great number of female interpreters, and that …

The Transposal Murder Case, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

Police Lieutenant Arthur Jamison glanced at the poem lying before him on the desk. Beside the poem were four photographs. One was that of Ashley Ponce, face resting on the park grass, a bullet hole in his temple. The other three photographs, in the proper context, could be considered incriminating. On the reverse side of each photograph was the name and address of the person being blackmailed.

Gems From Johnson's Dictionary, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

English lexicographers, those "harmless drudges" as Dr. Johnson called them, go all the way back to the English Expositour (1617) and maybe farther, to lists of "hard" words compiled by curious logophiles. But Ursa Major himself is surely the dean of all dictionary-makers. Here are some of Dr. Johnson's own definitions. His famous definition of network as "any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections" at least is intellibible to those who know some Latin ("I do not love Latin originals" he said under ferry, but his sesquipedalian vocabulary often denies this), but see …

Stating My Case, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

'Mejnour Zanoni' has done some fine work on interesting state names in "The Assault on Logology" in the November 1980 Word Ways; my favorites among his examples are ID IN IA NY OR SD WA WI. It is, however, regrettable that he felt the need to preface his listing with a page and a half of useless invective; this article contains my reply to a few of his points.

Se Doefel Daner, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

When the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded England during the fifth century, they wiped out the native Celts both physically and linguistically. Except for place-names, only a half-dozen or so Celtic words entered Old English. By the ninth century, with the Celts all but exterminated, the Anglo-Saxons settled down to enjoy the good English life.

Kickshaws, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws assembled by a guest editor.

A Case Of Mistaken Antonymy, Douglas J. Herrmann, Roger J. S. Chaffin

Word Ways

Antonyms are two words that are opposed on a dimension of denotative meaning. Unlike the concept of synonymity, which dates back to Aristotle, the concept of antonymy is of recent origin -- the Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms dates the first use of the term to 1867. Since the term was coined, people have accepted the concept and have felt quite capable of recognizing or generating antonyms. However, little thought has been given to opposites which resemble antonymy but are clearly not antonyms. These words, called pseudoantonyms, appear to be antonyms at first glance but closer inspection shows that they …

Lying In Wait, Frank Rubin

Word Ways

Many years ago, a friend challenged me to name an adjective, as opposed to an adverb, ending in LY. I do not recall if I succeeded, but the problem remained in my subconscious, and has surfaced at irregular intervals ever since. Occasionally I would sit down and mentally compose a list of ten or fifteen such words, each time trying to surpass my last effort.

Humorous Humerus, Edward R. Wolpow

Word Ways

When the ulnar nerve is struck at the medial edge of the distal humerus, it's not humorous, but who knows? the connection between these two homonyms may have led to the designation 'funny bone'. I present below a list of definitions for similar pairs (sometimes, triples) of homonyms. As the title implies, at least one word in each homonym set comes from a scientific vocabulary (but all words appear in Webster's Third edition). As an additional aid, the number of letters in each word is indicated.

Changes In The Mwpd, William Sunners

Word Ways

There are two separate editions of the current Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary. The first edition of this book, designated the Kangaroo by the publishers, was printed in the usual handy pocket size in April, 1974. In July, 1978, the dictionary was reprinted in larger type and christened the Wallaby edition. In it, several errors and omissions found by George Berryman and me were corrected; the resultant changes are summarized below. To avoid reprinting more than a single page, entries had to be shortened or removed in some cases to accommodate the additions.

Another Almanac, Robert Cass Keller

Word Ways

Willard Espy has done it again! Another Almanac of Words at Play copies the successful format of his classic An Almanac of Words at Play, an anthology of wordplay from a wide variety of books, newspapers and magazines, enlivened by Espy's witty poetry. It is a dazzling feast of verbal legedemain that deserves to be on the shelf of every Word Ways reader. I know of no better way for Word Ways readers to reach a large audience than to catch Espy's eye, and many did so. In the list below, 'quoted' means that the author obtained the item …

Sixteen-Letter Transposal Pairs, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Long transposal pairs, especially those in which the letters of one word must be thoroughly rearranged to form the other, have always fascinated logologists; in the February 1976 issue of Word Ways, I presented a list of well-mixed transposal pairs of 13 letters or more. A well-mixed transposal pair is defined as one in which at most three consecutive letters in one word appear in the other; for example, both words of the 17-letter transposal pair baSIPaRACHromATin - marSIPobRAnCHiATa contain the trigram SIP and the bigrams CH, RA and AT, but no others. This transposal pair, discovered by Charles Holding …

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover, including instructions to authors and subscribers.

Alphabetizing The Integers, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Recently, Howard Bergerson proposed the following research problem in logology:

I have had one research problem in mind for a long time -- I once did some preliminary work on it -- which could turn out to be anything from easy to formidable to practically impossible. It is this: Imagine the one thousand vigintillion minus one (if you don't include zero) consecutively named numbers arranged in alphabetical order and also in numerical order. How many (if any) numbers have their positions the same in both lists? What is the least such number? ... Does this intrigue you enough to have …

The Elusive Ten-Square, G. Hardy Ropes

Word Ways

Hats off to Jeff Grant! In "9x9 Word Squares" in the November, 1980 issue of Word Ways, he has rescued the nine-square from near-oblivion and done so within the confines of dictionaries. His article rekindled the spark of an old interest of mine -- the ten-square. For some time, I have felt (as Jeff Grant does) that constructing a ten-square is not beyond the realm of possibility.

College Life: U.S.A. A Teaching Resource Packet To Prepare Foreign Students For The Social Side Of Attending A College In The United States., Mark Koncewicz

MA TESOL Collection

This project is a teaching resource packet for ESL/EFL teachers who are interested in showing their students what American college life is like. The project is based on twelve situations which were selected because they seem to be the most typical situations that a foreign student would probably interact in while studying and living at an American college. There are two parts to this project: a set of slides with 5-7 consists of units for each of the situations and a text which consists of units for each of the situations. Each of these units is composed of three sections: …

Geometries And Words - Linguistics And Philosophy - A Model Of The Composing Process, Dorothy Augustine

English Faculty Articles and Research

Dorothy Augustine writes about composing a piece for philosophy.

Remarks On The History Of The Indo-European Infinitive, Dorothy Disterheft

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Touch Blue, Maxey Brooke

Word Ways

Some students of linguistics have come to the conclusion that our ancestors were color-blind. Max Muller, for example, points out that there is no Sanskrit root with reference to any definite color.

The Mangled Raven, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

Editor's Note: The following introduction to the Automynorcagrammatical Raven is taken from a letter from JAL to Howard Bergerson, himself a contributor of a similar construction to Word Ways in November 1975. In an Automynorcagram, the initial letters of the successive words repeat the original message.

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue, including a table of contents.

Tales From The Kingdom Of Tut, James I. Rambo

Word Ways

Editor's Note: Palindromist James Rambo, known by the pseudonym of 'Tut' in the National Puzzlers' League, died on July 27, 1980. Word Ways readers will remember him best for his transposition poems based on well-known phrases such as 'Fools rush in where angels fear to treat' and 'Discretion is the better part of valor'. The stories below, three of which first appeared in The Enigma (July 1972, April 1974, February 1975), show that he was interested in other forms of word-play as well.

A Pattern Word Quiz, Mary J. Hazard, Harry W. Hazard

Word Ways

For each of the fifty words listed below, you are to supply a non-crashing word having the same pattern of letters. For example, for BEETLE acceptable words include EGGNOG or ATTEST, but not FEEBLE (which has one or more letters in the same place as they appear in BEETLE). Unacceptable words include proper names, regular plurals in -D, regular preterites in -ED, participles in -ING, comparatives in -ER or -IER, superlatives in -EST or -IEST, and slang, dialect or foreign words. All answer words are well-known standard unhyphenated English words in the Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary, and appear in alphabetical order. …

9x9 Word Squares, Jeff Grant

Word Ways

Anyone who has tried to construct a regular word square of the ninth order will understand why there have been so few good examples ever exhibited. The building of large squares flourished in the first half of the twentieth century; according to the Sherlock Holmes memorial issued by the National Puzzlers' League in June 1980, a little more than one thousand 9x9 squares were published between 1897 and 1979. However, nearly all of these squares contain a high percentage of undesirable terms, such as obsolete, foreign and dialectic words, long-forgotten place-names, questionable adjectival inflections, and two-word terms. Out of all …

Show Your Colors, Richard E. Douglass

Word Ways

The object of this game is to compile a list of different words -- each related to its predecessor to form a compound word or familiar phrase -- and have this chain begin and end with the same word. Our theme is "Color" ... and, to keep the exercise interesting, we ask that your chains be no fewer than fifteen, nor more than twenty-five words in length. This will eliminate a simple BLUE-sky-BLUE combination ... and it conserves on paper by keeping your lists from stretching to infinity.

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of this issue, including instructions to authors and subscribers.

On Searching For Vowelless Words, Alan Frank

Word Ways

In the November 1977 issue of Word Ways, Philip Cohen suggested that a collection of all-consonant words would be useful in various logological investigations. In the August 1980 issue, Jeff Grant and Ross Eckler answered with a list of all-consonant words from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (Second and Third editions) and the Oxford English Dictionary. This article presents the results of a further search I conducted for such words.

The Poet's Corner

Word Ways

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