pogonotrophy
n. the growing of a beard
Language
Backtalk
FLESHPOT is a phonetic reversal of TOP-SHELF — it contains the same sounds in reverse order.
“A Fat Woman Questions Her Thin Friend”
A girl to B stylish must C zippers close,
D vote E qual F fort keeping buttons in rows.
G, I tried many diets, but H ievement was poor
I was J ded, o K , when I came to her door.
I said, “L egant lady, M bodying graces,
How did you N O ble (reduce) hippy places?
Please don’t be P vish, but answer on Q—
R special S sences T eeming in U?”
“No,” she said, V ehement, “No more W!
X ercise and good eating—that is Y I am trim:
And I’m Z ro doubtful you too can be slim!”
— Lyn Coffin
Double-Take
In Britain this wouldn’t be redundant — in British English an avenue is a row of trees.
Unfortunately, that’s not so in Toronto, where Avenue Road is a major thoroughfare.
Local journalist Robert Fulford called it “an identity crisis with pavement.”
Double-Talk
This sentence is unwritable:
There are three ways to spell /tu/.
This sentence is unsayable:
There are three ways to pronounce “slough.”
In a Word
emacity
n. the urge to spend money
oniomania
n. an uncontrollable desire to buy things
Truthful Numbers
- FOUR contains four letters.
- TEN is spelled with ten raised dots in Braille.
- TWELVE is worth 12 points in Scrabble.
- FIFTEEN is spelled with 15 dots and dashes in International Morse Code.
TWENTY-NINE contains 29 straight lines — if you don’t count the hyphen.
R.I.P.
Writing in the New York Mercury in 1863, Robert Henry Newell noted the curious pine-board epitaph of a Union fifer at Manassas:
The lower portion “had to be inscribed figuratively, in order to get it all upon the narrow monument.” It means:
“In all its praise of that quiet sleep in which there are no anticipations to be disappointed, no gluttony to make sick, and no Confederacies to guard against,–the verse will be plain to all.”
In a Word
maritorious
adj. fond of one’s husband
This List Contains …
- fifteen Es
- seven Fs
- four Gs
- six Hs
- eight Is
- four Ns
- five Os
- six Rs
- eighteen Ss
- eight Ts
- four Us
- three Vs
- two Ws
- three Xs