- As Britain prepared for World War I, officers were required to have their swords sharpened.
- Wordsworth’s “The Rainbow” has an average word length of 3.08 letters.
- sin 10° × sin 50° × sin 70° = 1/8
- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE = I SWEAR HE’S LIKE A LAMP
- “I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.” — Benjamin Disraeli
Language
Terms Past
Disused words from Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language:
- figure-flinger: a pretender to astrology and prediction
- pissburnt: stained with urine
- blinkard: one that has bad eyes
- centuriator: a name given to historians, who distinguish times by centuries
- longimanous: long-handed; having long hands
- candlewaster: that which consumes candles; a spendthrift
- carecrazed: broken with care and solicitude
- overyeared: too old
- scarefire: a fright by fire; a fire breaking out so as to raise terror
- traveltainted: harrassed; fatigued with travel
- vowfellow: one bound by the same vow
“Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition,” he had written in the preface. “[But] when we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years.”
In a Word
lalochezia
n. emotional relief gained by using indecent or vulgar language
“Truly Eerie Wordplay”
In the November 2010 Word Ways, Mike Keith notes a striking coincidence:
Bible’s Machine and Welding
6499 Blue Springs Pkwy
Mosheim, TN 37818
That’s the address of a machine shop in eastern Tennessee, presumably owned by a family named Bible. Enter the zip code in a calculator and turn it upside down.
In a Word
pandiculation
n. the act of stretching oneself
Fooled Again
Court transcript quoted by Rodney Jones in Disorderly Conduct: Verbatim Excerpts From Actual Cases, 1987:
The Court: I got the Quadrophenia, but then he said somebody played in it, and I didn’t get that.
Prosecutor: The Who.
The Court: The what?
Witness: Musicians.
Prosecutor: The Who.
Witness: The Who.
The Court: Who?
Witness: The Who. That’s the name of the band.
The Court: So that’s the name of the group, the Who?
Witness: Yes, the Who.
The Court: Not the What? The Who?
Witness: No, the Who.
The Court: You got it, everybody? The Quadrophenia is a movie with the Who.
Witness: Punk rockers.
The Court: All right.
Misc
- ALONE and UPRAISE can be beheaded twice and retain their essential meanings.
- Evelyn Waugh’s first wife was named Evelyn.
- 1033 = 81 + 80 + 83 + 83
- Can a shadow rotate?
- “Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.” — Benjamin Franklin
Found Out
In spite of twenty-five years in Southern California, [Aldous Huxley] remains an English gentleman. The scientist’s habit of examining everything from every side and of turning everything upside down and inside out is also characteristic of Aldous. I remember him leafing through a copy of Transition, reading a poem in it, looking again at the title of the magazine, reflecting for a moment, then saying, ‘Backwards it spells NO IT ISN(T) ART.’
— Igor Stravinsky, Dialogues, 1982
In a Word
schoenobatist
funambulist
equilibrist
n. a tightrope walker
Misc
- SWEET-TOOTHED has three consecutive pairs of letters. SUBBOOKKEEPER has four.
- Will you answer this question negatively?
- 4624 = 44 + 46 + 42 + 44
- The telephone number 278-7433 spells both ASTRIDE and CRUSHED.
- “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” — Emerson