In a Word
kalokagathia
n. a combination of the good and the beautiful in a person
bellibone
n. a remarkably beautiful and good woman
Literary Pangrams
This excerpt from Coriolanus contains every letter of the alphabet but Z:
O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgin’d it e’er since.
This one, from Milton’s Paradise Lost (from the Z in grazed to the b in Both), contains all of them:
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox,
Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed
From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods.
See Quick Brown Fox, A Biblical Pangram, A Pangrammatic Highway, and Nevermore.
All Greek
To a dining companion, William Hogarth once sent a card inscribed with a knife, a fork, and these letters:
Η Β Π
It was an invitation to “eta beta pi.”
Exasperated that Nicholas Rowe kept borrowing his snuffbox, Samuel Garth wrote these letters on the lid:
Φ Ρ
“Fie! Rowe!”
Their friend John Dennis observed, “A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.”
In a Word
pridian
adj. relating to yesterday
nudiustertian
adj. of the day before yesterday
Spoon River
“Lines by an Oxford Don,” from the Globe, June 1805:
My brain was filled with rests of thought,
No more by currying wares distraught,
As lazing dreamily I lay
In my Canoodian canay.
Ah me, methought, how leef were swite
If men could neither wreak nor spite;
No erring bloomers, no more slang,
No tungles then to trip the tang!
No more the undergraddering tits
Would exercise their woolish fits
With tidal ales (and false, I wis)
Of my fame-farred tamethesis!
A sentence that makes equal sense when spoonerized: “I must brush my hat, for it is pouring with rain.”
When George S. Kaufman’s daughter told him a friend had eloped from Vassar, he said, “Ah! She put her heart before the course.”
Quick!
Obey this command!
In a Word
humicubation
n. the act of lying on the ground
Over and Out
Exhausted after a long day of insisting that one must never end a sentence with a preposition, the English teacher took a book about Australia up to her daughter’s bedroom.
“Mommy,” said the girl, “what did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?”
Letter Shift
Tidy
DEAD-ENDEDNESSES contains one A, two Ns, three Ss, four Ds, and five Es.
TEMPERAMENTALLY can be separated into a single letter followed by words of 2, 3, 4, and 5 letters: T, EM, PER, AMEN, TALLY.
