Many masculine nouns can be converted to feminine with a suffix, as HERO-HEROINE and HOST-HOSTESS.
Name a feminine noun that can be converted to masculine with a suffix.
Language
It Begins
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu–
Sing cuccu!
— English round, 1260
Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
— Ezra Pound, 1917
The names of the 12 months can be anagrammed into these lines:
Merry, durable, just grace
My every future month embrace;
No jars remain, joy bubble up apace.
But poet and journalist George Ellis (1753-1815) summed them up this way:
Snowy, Flowy, Blowy,
Showery, Flowery, Bowery,
Moppy, Croppy, Droppy,
Breezy, Sneezy, Freezy.
In a Word
hindermate
n. a companion who hinders; opposite of helpmate
Fitting
… balances. The bottom half of each letter mirrors the top.
In a Word
unlove
v. to cease to love
Targeted Advertising
New York florist Max Schling once placed an ad in the New York Times that was written entirely in shorthand.
Hundreds of curious businessmen passed the ad on to their secretaries, requesting a translation.
The secretaries read: “When getting flowers for the boss’s wife, remember Schling’s Florist.”
Formal Speech
A puzzle by Isaac Asimov:
What word in the English language changes its pronunciation when it is capitalized?
In a Word
artolater
n. a worshiper of bread
Around the World
Shift each letter in EMBLAZONRY forward 13 places in the alphabet and you get an anagram of EMBLAZONRY:
Slow Maltreated Wailing
William Gladstone was cursed with a well-balanced name, one that his political enemies found well suited to anagrams. The conservative-minded Lewis Carroll found that WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE can be rearranged to spell both WILD AGITATOR! MEANS WELL and WILT TEAR DOWN ALL IMAGES?
The prime minister might have shrugged this off as a coincidence — “wild agitator” might mean anything, after all — but a more painstaking student found that RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE spells I’M A WHIG WHO’LL BE A TRAITOR TO ENGLAND’S RULE.
Which is rather too specific to disown.