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Chair Aids Tool Is Into, Willard R. Espy May 1973

Chair Aids Tool Is Into, Willard R. Espy

Word Ways

By sound, many words are a series of shorter words strung together, the parts often having no relationship in meaning to the whole: QUERIED = QUEER + REED. In the August 1969 Word Ways, J. A. Lindon suggested the name homophone for this type of word play. Notice that it extends the concept of homonym which, strictly speaking, is a single word with one sound but two or more spellings. The homophone is the aural equivalent of the charade, in which the constituent words must be read instead of spoken.

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Croakers And Swift Croakers, James I. Rambo, Mary J. Youngquist May 1973

Croakers And Swift Croakers, James I. Rambo, Mary J. Youngquist

Word Ways

As readers of John G. Fuller's Games for Insomniacs (Doubleday, 1966) recall, Tom Swifties are sentences in which the adverb echoes the subject-matter of the quotation: "I can't drink any more pineapple juice," said Tom dolefully. In a February 1972 Word Ways article, J. A. Lindon showed several ways in which the classic Tom Swiftie could be generalized, all within the adverbial format.

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Word Networks (Part 1), A. Ross Eckler May 1973

Word Networks (Part 1), A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most logologists have noticed that some words, such as SHAME and SHARE, are relatively near each other, whereas others, such as TONIC and WATER, are far apart. If pressed for a definition of the distance between two words, they might suggest that it is equal to the number of letters that must be altered to transmute one word into the other. The nearer two words are to each other, the easier it is to accidentally change one into another by a typographical miscue. A large number of English words are only one letter apart, a situation humorously exploited for many …

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Translingual Transposals, Darryl Francis May 1973

Translingual Transposals, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The February 1973 issue of Word Ways contained a provocative article by Dmitri Borgmann, challenging logologists to pay more attention to classical topics of word play, such as transpositions, word squares and palindromes. Although a number of his suggestions would take a considerable effort to carry out, one challenge -- that of finding English words of ten or more letters which transpose into foreign words -- proved too much for us to resist. A few hours spent searching through easily available foreign-language dictionaries turned up the following specimens of ten to twelve letters in length.

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Front Cover, Publication Information May 1973

Front Cover, Publication Information

Word Ways

Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents

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Mcgovern Words, Darryl Francis May 1973

Mcgovern Words, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

For some while now, we have been building a file of new and nonce words that we come across in print. Our file currently runs from AGNEWISM to ZEDABETICAL. When we light on a word that we suspect is not in any dictionary, we first check it against various dictionaries, and then if our suspicion was correct we generate an entry in our file for the word concerned. Our file consists of filing cards measuring 5 inches by 3 inches, and on each is the word concerned, the source from which we took it, and the sentence in which the …

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Colloquy May 1973

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.

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An Onomastic Study (Part 1), Dmitri A. Borgmann May 1973

An Onomastic Study (Part 1), Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

This is an age of extreme specialization. No longer can the general practitioner of logology aspire to verbal immortality. Those who dedicate themselves to selected branches of the science stand a much better chance of reaching those fantastic heights of achievement that remain shrouded in an impenetrable fog for the general practitioner.

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Watching And Weaving Woven Words, R. Robinson Rowe May 1973

Watching And Weaving Woven Words, R. Robinson Rowe

Word Ways

I have what some might call a despicable habit of seeing words within words, like spotting the COP in SCOPE or detecting the ART in GARRETS, but the habit is recreational. Noting in the latter that the inner word was spelled with the letters in the even-numbered positions while the odd letters GRES did not form a common word, I began looking for "woven words" for which both the even and the odd groups were interwoven words.

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The New Resistance, B. A. Booper May 1973

The New Resistance, B. A. Booper

Word Ways

The reader of this paper might be tempted to think of it as a reply to Richard Noss's "Underground Transformer" (hereafter UT). Let him, then, for it is. Yet it is more, too. It is a glimpse at Truth through the mirror of error.

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Your Logological Assets, Dmitri A. Borgmann May 1973

Your Logological Assets, Dmitri A. Borgmann

Word Ways

The ordinary individual has long regarded his name and address as his most prized logological possessions. They identify him, they locate him, they represent him -- in short, they are him. In keeping with the treatment accorded rare jewels, the average owner of a name and address has been understandably reluctant to subject them to indiscriminate and possibly injurious use by putting them on public display, by giving them out for the mere asking. Psychologically, this attitude harks back to primitive times, when there was felt to be magic in a name, so that a strange in possession of one's …

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Answers And Solutions May 1973

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Pied Poetry, Martin Gardner, J. A. Lindon May 1973

Pied Poetry, Martin Gardner, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

A look at poetry.

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Instructions To Authors May 1973

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

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City Slickers, Cherry Pickers, Leonard R. N. Ashley May 1973

City Slickers, Cherry Pickers, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

The killer-diller word experts of Word Ways are invited to try their hands at this brief list of slang words. Most of them are fairly easy, but do try for exact definitions and to come as close to fifty right as possible.

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Kickshaws, David L. Silverman May 1973

Kickshaws, David L. Silverman

Word Ways

Readers are encouraged to send their own favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Associate Editor. All answers appear in the Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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A Literary Word-Sequence Debut, Judith Tarr Isquit Feb 1973

A Literary Word-Sequence Debut, Judith Tarr Isquit

Word Ways

The term word-chain is used when describing word series in which the last letter from one word repeats the beginning letter contained in its successor; for illustration, consider the phrase "shimmering, gleaming, glistening glow -- winter reigns, splendiferous snow" from Mary Youngquist's poem printed in an earlier Word Ways issue. Recently, John Muirhead (a Canadian reader) proposed the term word-sequence for word series in which adjacent word-pairs always have at least one common alphabetic letter. Not the similarity between word-sequences and overlapping word-progressions such as NUTS, SUIT, GIST, GILT, GOLD, LODE, DOPE, COPE or REMIND, LIMNED, DOLMEN, MELONS, AMOLES, MOLARS, …

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Front Cover, Publication Information Feb 1973

Front Cover, Publication Information

Word Ways

Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents

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Hidden Opposites, Mary J. Youngquist Feb 1973

Hidden Opposites, Mary J. Youngquist

Word Ways

A list of fifty short phrases is given below. In each phrase there are two hidden words which are opposites, or complements, of each other. For example, KITE GAVE can be rearranged to GIVE-TAKE. Answers can be found in Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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Sight-Reading Substitution Ciphers, Jean C. Sabine Feb 1973

Sight-Reading Substitution Ciphers, Jean C. Sabine

Word Ways

The usual procedure when trying one's hand at a new craft is to undergo some kind of indoctrination before taking any action. The purpose of this article is to invite the reader, if he has little or no acquaintance with cryptography, to explore the potential of knowledge already in his possession. Instant linguistic recreation will result.

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Rhyming Phenomena In English Words, Iris M. Tiedt Feb 1973

Rhyming Phenomena In English Words, Iris M. Tiedt

Word Ways

Investigations of English words and phrases have led scholars to the discovery of several rhyming phenomena as in such words as CRISSCROSS, POWWOW and BONBON. These types of rhyming were noted by Jespersen in his Modern English Grammar as well as Marchand in Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. The words fall in three groupings. consonantal rhymes, vowel rhymes, and repetition of the same syllable (or tautonyms). It is a real challenge to see how many of each you can discover.

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Twelve-Letter Pair Pyramid Words, Ralph G. Beaman Feb 1973

Twelve-Letter Pair Pyramid Words, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

In any logological research one is required, consciously or subconsciously, to devise and follow a set of rules for inclusion. The far outermost limits of such rules have been discussed several times in Word Ways. But the basic, starting rules have been virtually ignored. Let us choose a subject and see how the "rules for inclusion" will alter our allowable stock of words.

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Acro-Crosswords, Walter Shedlofsky Feb 1973

Acro-Crosswords, Walter Shedlofsky

Word Ways

In "The Case of the Acro-Double", a short mystery story in the November 1972 Word Ways, the hero, Farley West, mentions a book by the murdered Guy Orient containing Anachuttles, Acro-Doubles, Acro-Triples and Acro-Crosswords. Word Ways readers are familiar with the first three constructions; in this article I introduce the concept of an Acro-Crossword.

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Pocket Ghost, A. Ross Eckler Feb 1973

Pocket Ghost, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Many Word Ways readers are familiar with the game of Ghost. In the two-man version of this game, players build sequentially toward a word by alternately adding terminal letters; the one who completes a word loses the game. After a player has added a letter to the sequence, his opponent can challenge him to produce a word starting with that sequence; if he can do so, the challenger loses the game, but if he cannot, the player challenged loses the game. Both players must agree beforehand on a dictionary of admissible words; ordinarily, words must be three or more letters …

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Words With Two Pairs Of Like Letters, Darryl Francis Feb 1973

Words With Two Pairs Of Like Letters, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Tucked away below the line in Webster's Second Edition is the word KJOEKKENMOEDDING, a Danish word from which kitchen midden is derived. This word is one of the very few beginning with the letters KJ which are listed by English dictionaries. Apart from this, the word is also notable for its two pairs of like letters, i.e. its pair of adjacent K's and its pair of adjacent D's.

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A Scrabble Cube Problem, Josefa Byrne Feb 1973

A Scrabble Cube Problem, Josefa Byrne

Word Ways

The object of the game Scrabble Cubes is to use as many as possible of the fourteen letters in three minutes in a crossword puzzle arrangement. One shakes the cubes in a cup, spilling them out and using only the face-up letters. The score is figured as in Scrabble but without a board. Each letter has the same point value as in Scrabble (A=1, K=5, X=8, Z=10, etc.) but no bonus is given for seven letter words.

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Logomachy Feb 1973

Logomachy

Word Ways

This column is devoted to various word games in which readers can match their wits against each other. Rules of play, if not given below, can be found in earlier Logomachy columns.

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Lesser Breeds Without The Law, Leonard R. N. Ashley Feb 1973

Lesser Breeds Without The Law, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

From such expressions as French leave and the French disease, Dutch courage and Dutch treat, his fine Italian hand in treachery or deceit, and so on, we learn something of the prejudices of our ancestors enshrined in the common vocabulary of the English language. Here are a score of words referring to nations or nationalities. You are asked to guess them from their definitions. How many more can you add to the list? There is something of xenophobia, even contempt, for foreigners -- for not only England, but every Englishman is an island -- here. Prejudices are obvious …

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Answers And Solutions Feb 1973

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

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Kickshaws, David L. Silverman Feb 1973

Kickshaws, David L. Silverman

Word Ways

Readers are encouraged to send their own favorite linguistic kickshaws to the Associate Editor. All answers appear in the Answers and Solutions at the end of this issue.

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