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.

Stutterances, J. A. Lindon

Word Ways

This, I learn, is an old idea, but it is new to me, and readers may not mind some fresh examples. By a stutterance (stammered utterance -- no doubt some more pretentious term already exists) I mean a sentence (ideally) in which each unit of sound is at once repeated. The stutterance will be of the first, second, third, etc. order according as the unit of sound is a monosyllable, disyllable, trisyllable, etc., and of the first, second, etc. degree according as the echo is single, double, etc.

An Interlaced Charade, R. Robinson Rowe

Word Ways

Words may be called interlaced if composed of overlapping shorter words. Fagot is a good example, with its regular overlap of fag, ago, and got. It also contains fa, go, a and o forwards, and to, tog, and toga in reverse order. Thus this five-letter word has ten component words, a ration of two to one for a measure of interlace.

The Most Dangerous Word, Judith Todd Isquit

Word Ways

A teenager is at the wheel of the family car, his girl at his side. The road is unfamiliar to him, and he relies on her for directions. They approach the intersection of a busy highway; he comes to a stop, looks tot he left and right, and puts the car into low gear. As the car moves slowly into the intersection, he queries his companion: "We turn left here, don't we?" "Right!" she emphatically agrees.

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.

Occupational Avoidance, Mary J. Youngquist

Word Ways

Readers of John Fuller's Games For Insomniacs (Doubleday, 1966) may recall the chapter on Occupational Hazards, which gives a compendium of ways people get fired from their occupations (orchestra leaders are disbanded, electricians are discharged, postmen are unzipped, and so on). More recently, readers of Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle have been playing the analogous game of I Could Have Been (a telephone operator but I had a bad hang-up, a mountaineer but I wasn't so inclined). Next time your mother-in-law asks you why you can't hold down a steady job, you can give her one of …

The Pangrammatic Window, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

A small group of logologists have long been intrigued by the use of all the alphabetical letters in a single sentence. No, I don't mean such examples as PACK MY BOX WITH FIVE DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS, but an uncontrived and natural use of all the letters.

If Vicious Ver Horses ...

Word Ways

In the May 1972 Word Ways, readers were invited to supply Albert Wilansky of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with V-W homophonic pairs as illustrated by the 1953 Burma-Shave advertisement above. The following more-or-less definitive list has been compiled by Stefan and Besty Burr, Murray Pearce and Mary Youngquist.

Presidential Affairs, Palmer C. Peterson

Word Ways

In the November 1971 Word Ways, I presented a number of forms (solid crossword puzzles having simple geometric shapes) which incorporated the names of states intertwined with their nicknames. The editor suggested that the surnames of the Presidents and Vice-Presidents might take kindly to the same treatment. The following is evidence that the mountain laboured and brought forth a mouse.

Curious Monikers, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

We find foreign names that are rendered into English odd indeed: consider the Indian "Sitting Bull" and "Crazy Horse", or the Chinese "Face Powdered Over With Bright Ideas" (my interpretation of Fu Manchu). But many names that are familiar to us in their common form are baffling when translated into English. Who would recognize that "Judge of God" (Hebrew) is Daniel? Who recalls that Priscilla means "somewhat old"? See if your knowledge of foreign languages and names extends to translating these into their more well-known forms.

A Few Last Words, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Let us begin by supposing that you are a dedicated logologist who has spent many years working on a variety of logological problems. Over the years you have become increasingly annoyed with the amount of time that you have had to spend searching for particular words in various reference works. Since no two dictionaries contain the same stock of words, you may have to search many dictionaries until one or another of them verifies the word you are seeking to identify. Of course, if none of the major dictionaries of the English language contains the word, you then have to …

Instructions To Authors

Word Ways

Instructions to authors wishing to contribute to the publication.

Hsi Hsi And The Rhinoceros, Philip M. Cohen

Word Ways

You and your wife are spending a quiet afternoon at the zoo. In the monkey house, your attention is drawn to a small furry animal resembling a raccoon more than a monkey. You read the sign attached to its cage:

MADAGASCAR LEMUR (Daubentonia Madagascariensis)
Arboreal and nocturnal in habits, it lives in the bamboo jungles of Madagascar, feeding on vegetables and the larvae of certain borers. Its feet ...

Your wife interrupts your studies at this point, plucking at your sleeve and exasperatedly asking if you plan to spend the whole afternoon staring at one mangy monkey.

Strange Pronunciations, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

Somewhere along about the Third Grade we discovered that certain words are not pronounced at all the way they should be from their spellings. Remember PNEUMONIA with a silent P?

Logological research in this area appears to have been restricted to single letters. A list of 26 words containing the 26 silent letters and a corresponding list in which a letter sound appears without the letter was printed in the August 1970 issue of Word Ways (both lists were originally compiled by Dmitri Borgmann).

A Clueless Crossword, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

The average crossword puzzle supplies the potential solver with a number of things:

i) a diagram made up of black and white squares, the white squares to be filled with the letters of the answer words
ii) clues indicating in turn each of the words referred to above.

Words Having Three Rare Letters, Leslie E. Card, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

For several years, logologists have been wrestling with the problem of finding an English word containing the four rarest letters JQXZ.
In this article, we consider a closely related problem. There are 3,276 different ways that three letters can be chosen from the alphabet with repetition allowed (i.e., each letter is replaced after drawing, so that it can be drawn more than once). For each possible combination of letters, can one discover a word which uses them?

Further Websterian Errors, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

There is an old saying 'Even Homer nods'. In other words, even the best of us can make mistakes. However diligent we may be, it is still always possible to make mistakes. For the purpose of this article we are going to put the Webster dictionaries in Homer' place, and see if we can catch them nodding, or making mistakes.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Parma Eldalamberon Vol. 1 No. 2, Paula Marmor

Parma Eldalamberon

The Journal of The Mythopoeic Linguistic Fellowship

Parma Eldalamberon/The Book of the Elven Tongues is the journal of the Mythopoeic Linguistic Fellowship, a Special Interest Group of the Mythopoeic Society, interested in imaginary fantasy languages and all matters linguistic and philosophical, especially the diverse tongues of Middle-earth and the Low Worlds.

Terse Verse (And Worse), Mary J. Youngquist

Word Ways

In the February 1970 Kickshaws, Dave Silverman introduced the concept of Spoonerhyme -- short doggerel poetry in the form ILL WIT. / WILL IT / DIE OUT? / I DOUBT. Construction of these verses is as habit forming as eating salted peanuts (but fortunately a good deal less fattening).

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Front Cover, Publication Information

Word Ways

Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents

Sticks And Stones ..., Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

In years past, as a self-confidence morale booster, groups of people would coin derogatory names for those outside the group. Since dictionaries record the language, many of these opprobrious names and terms have become legitimate words. But what man puts in, man may take out. And, we say, modern society no longer tolerates these bastardizations. Logologists -- who is better equipped than you to revise the dictionary?

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.

The Longest Dictionary Words, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In Language on Vacation (Scribner's, 1965), Dmitri Borgmann devotes several pages to a survey of the longest words in the English language. As might be expected, he finds it necessary to proceed from standard reference works such as the Webster dictionaries to ever-more-esoteric sources as the word-length is increased. One rapidly enters the realm of the nonce word -- a word used but once, or at most a few times by a single author. Since Borgmann's book appeared, it has become apparent to logologists that chemical names describing complex organic compounds can be almost infinitely expanded; the Guiness Book of …

Bluebeetles And Bean Guns, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

The criminal classes have their argot, closed groups their cant, every vocation and avocation its own special jargon. Furniture salesman speak of borax (cheap furniture), the jeweller of jaggers (cheap watches). The sho salesman knows that kangaroos are not animals, the circus hand that convicts (zebras) are. It's really amazing how many words of these supposedly private languages the average American manages to pick up. Run down the list. See if you can spot at least one word in each group that you can define. If you can, that's zooly (superb).

The Strong Vs. The Weak, M. H. Greenblatt

Word Ways

In the English language, verbs are divided into two groups: the strong and the weak. Weak verbs are those which simply add the letters ED onto the basic verb in order to form the other principal parts; an example is the verb WALK, WALKED, WALKED. A strong verb is one which changes its spelling in order to form the three principal parts; an example is the verb SING, SANG, SUNG.

High Scoring Scrabble, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Regular readers of Word Ways will no doubt be aware of our interest in the game of Scrabble. In this article, we intend to present some recently-discovered Scrabble games involving extremely high scores.

An After-Dinner Mint, Ralph G. Beaman

Word Ways

The article "Words, Non-words, Nonce Words" in the May 1971 Word Ways touched briefly on coined words. By this I mean words not in any dictionary, not in the spoken or written literature, in fact not in any known place -- but "words" that should be words, at least in the mind of some logologist. The article concluded that words coined only for their logological uniqueness were examples of bad logology.

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.