— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890
Language
In a Word
curglaff
n. the shock felt on plunging into cold water
Charade
Amiable together.
Am I able to get her?
In a Word
cingulomania
n. a desire to hold another in one’s arms
Also:
basorexia
n. a craving to kiss
“Riddles for the Post Office”
The following ludicrous direction to a letter was copied verbatim from the original and interesting document:
too dad Tomas
hat the ole oke
otchut
I O Bary pade
Sur plees to let ole feather have this sefe.The letter found the gentleman at ‘The Old Oak Orchard, Tenbury.’ In another letter, the writer, after a severe struggle to express ‘Scotland,’ succeeded at length to his satisfaction, and wrote it thus: ‘stockling.’ A third letter was sent by a woman to a son who had settled in Tennessee, which the old lady had thus expressed with all phonetic simplicity, ’10 S C.’
— Robert Conger Pell, Milledulcia, 1857
Word-Unit Palindromes
These sentences read the same backward as forward:
- King, are you glad you are king?
- So patient a doctor to doctor a patient so.
- Dollars make men covetous, then covetous men make dollars.
- Husband by murdered wife lies cold, and cold lies wife, murdered by husband.
Our Mutual Friend
Anagrams on Dickens titles:
- THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY = DICKENS: NAIVE ENTER FANCIFUL DOTHEBOYS HALL
- OLD CURIOSITY SHOP = STORY O’ PIOUS CHILD
- OLIVER TWIST, BY CHARLES DICKENS = BOLD CREW SINS AT SLICK THIEVERY
- THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD = FOOD ENDETH MY WEIRD STORY
“We talk about the tyranny of words,” writes David Copperfield, “but we like to tyrannize over them too.”
Poser
What’s the difference between six dozen dozen and half a dozen dozen?
If you answered “nothing,” reconsider.
In a Word
vernalagnia
adj. heightened sexual desire in the springtime
Lo!
In 1610, thinking he had discovered two moons orbiting Saturn, Galileo composed a message:
ALTISSIMUM PLANETAM TERGEMINUM OBSERVAVI (“I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form”)
… and sent it to Kepler as an anagram:
SMAISMRMILMEPOETALEUMIBUNENUGTTAUIRAS
Remarkably, Kepler managed to “solve” this as a message about Mars, not Saturn:
SALVE UMBISTENEUM GEMINATUM MARTIA PROLES (“Hail, twin companionship, children of Mars”)
The German astronomer had predicted that the Red Planet had two moons, and imagined that Galileo was confirming his belief.
There’s a message in this, somewhere.