Wikipedia’s list of cetaceans includes a photo of each species listed, but the entry for Deraniyagala’s beaked whale shows only this note:
[cetacean needed]
Bonus Wikipedia humor note: The article on British labor economist Guy Standing includes a photo of Standing seated at a 2012 conference. Some have suggested the caption “Guy Standing sitting.” So far they haven’t prevailed.
ladrone
n. a thief; robber; highwayman; rogue
depeculation
n. a robbing or embezzling
desponsate
adj. married
adhorn
v. to make a cuckold of
According to legend, French highwayman Claude Duval agreed not to rob one gentleman if his wife would dance the courante with him by the wayside.
He was hanged at Tyburn in 1670 “to the great grief of the women.” A memorial in Covent Garden reads, “Here lies DuVall: Reder, if male thou art, Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart.”
Have Angleworms attractive homes?
Do Bumblebees have brains?
Do Caterpillars carry combs?
Do Ducks dismantle drains?
Can Eels elude elastic earls?
Do Flatfish fish for flats?
Are Grigs agreeable to girls?
Do Hares have hunting hats?
Do Ices make an Ibex ill?
Do Jackdaws jug their jam?
Do Kites kiss all the kids they kill?
Do Llamas live on lamb?
Will Moles molest a mounted mink?
Do Newts deny the news?
Are Oysters boisterous when they drink?
Do Parrots prowl in pews?
Do Quakers get their quills from quails?
Do Rabbits rob on roads?
Are Snakes supposed to sneer at snails?
Do Tortoises tease toads?
Can Unicorns perform on horns?
Do Vipers value veal?
Do Weasels weep when fast asleep?
Can Xylophagans squeal?
Do Yaks in packs invite attacks?
Are Zebras full of zeal?
“P.S. Shake well and recite every morning in a shady place.”
Said a logical linguist named Rolles,
“As we always call Polish folk Poles,
For better precision
(I am a logician)
We ought to call Dutch people Holes.”
— The [Chicago] Day Book, July 18, 1916
For a story on library cutbacks in a certain Essex town, the Telegraph chose the headline BOOK LACK IN ONGAR.
(Apparently apocryphal, but entertaining.)
Bycocket is an obsolete word for a kind of cap or headdress. Its entry in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains this woeful note:
Through a remarkable series of blunders and ignorant reproductions of error, this word appears in modern dictionaries as ABACOT. In Hall’s Chron. a bicocket appears to have been misprinted abococket, which was copied by Grafton, altered by Holinshed to abococke, and finally ‘improved’ by Abraham Fleming to abacot (perhaps through an intermediate abacoc); hence it was again copied by Baker, inserted in his Glossarium by Spelman, and thence copied by Phillips, and so handed down through Bailey, Ash, Todd, etc., to 19th century dictionaries (some of which provide a picture of the ‘abacot’), and even inserted in dictionaries of English and foreign languages.
The OED defines abacot as a “variant of bycocket”.
In 1768, Benjamin Franklin proposed a new alphabet, warning that without a phonetic scheme to stabilize spelling and pronunciation, “our writing will become the same with the Chinese as to the difficulty of learning and using it.” He composed this letter as a sample of his idea:
He explains everything (and answers the imagined objections above) in this essay.
06/03/2026 UPDATE: Reader Jason Taff notes:
The word ‘I’ is pronounced as a diphthong in English, and it’s transcribed as such in that text. But the first vowel of the diphthong in the text matches the ‘schwa’ vowel in the last syllable of ‘Kensington’, whereas modern English pronounces that first sound to match the sound in the word ‘not’ (which appears later in the text).
This is precisely a remnant of what’s called the Great English Vowel Shift that separates Chaucerian English from Shakespearean English. It had started in Shakespeare’s time (1600’s), but hadn’t fully progressed to its modern version in Franklin’s time (1700’s). This text is a snapshot record of that change in progress!
(Thanks, Jason.)
Spotted on the r/linguisticshumor subreddit:
