Road Show

The avoid creating duplicate street names in Columbia, Maryland, developer The Rouse Company took its inspiration from famous works of art and literature. Street name maven Howard Channing cited these as some of his favorites:

  • Attic Window Way
  • Banjo Court
  • Barefoot Boy Street
  • Better Hours Court
  • Cloudburst Hill
  • Dragon Claw Street
  • Drowsy Day Street
  • Feathered Head Street
  • Flapjack Lane
  • Frostwork Row
  • Fruitgift Place
  • Hat Brim Lane
  • Honey Salt Row
  • Hundred Drums Row
  • Kind Rain Street
  • Latchkey Row
  • Lifequest Lane
  • Little Boots Street
  • Mad River Lane
  • Melting Shadows Lane
  • Quiet Hours Street
  • Resting Sea Street
  • Rustling Leaf Street
  • Satan Wood Drive
  • Sealed Message Street
  • Sharp Antler Street
  • Snuffbox Terrace
  • Tufted Moss Street
  • Wineglass Court
  • Youngheart Lane

These and more are listed in Paul Dickson’s 1996 book What’s in a Name?, and the town once published a book with the whole story. This database catalogs some of the names’ origins. Channing called Columbia the most “provocatively and imaginatively” named town he’s studied.

| Language · Literature · Oddities

In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gum_wall,_Seattle,_Washington,_Estados_Unidos,_2017-09-02,_DD_19-21_HDR.jpg
Image: Diego Delso

manducate
v. chew

congustable
adj. having a similar flavor

deturpation
n. a making foul

gazingstock
n. a thing gazed at with wonder

Beneath Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a 50-foot brick wall covered with used chewing gum. Begun in the 1990s, the wall now bears an estimated 180 pieces of gum per brick. In 2009 it was ranked second only to the Blarney Stone as the world’s germiest tourist attraction.

Washington state governor Jay Inslee called the “gum wall” his “favorite thing about Seattle you can’t find anywhere else,” but in fact Bubblegum Alley, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is even bigger, at 70 feet long (below). Opponents call it offensive, but the Chamber of Commerce lists it as a “special attraction.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bubblegum_alley.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons
| Language · Oddities

“Collective Farm”

In the best collective use,
Geese afoot are gaggles
(Even when one goose gets loose,
Falls behind and straggles);

Skein‘s the word for geese in flight.
Turtledoves form dools.
Barren‘s right (though impolite)
For a pack of mules.

Starlings join in murmuration,
Pheasants in a rye,
Larks in lovely exaltation,
Leopards, leap (they’re spry).

Ducks in flight are known as teams;
Paddings when they swim.
Herrings in poetic gleams
Please the wordsmith’s whim.

Cats collect into a clowder,
Kittens make a kindle.
Sloths of bears growl all the louder
As their forces dwindle.

Lapwings gather in deceit,
Apes convene in shrewdness,
Mares in stud (an odd conceit
Bordering on lewdness).

Foxes muster in a skulk,
Squirrels run in drays
While collectives in the bulk
Make up word bouquets.

— Felicia Lamport

| Language · Poems

In Brief

When H.P. Re of Coldwater, Mich., died in 1931, his claim to have the world’s shortest name was up for grabs, and the Associated Press held a sort of contest to find his successor. J. Ur of Torrington, Conn., expressed early confidence because he had no middle initial, but, AP reported:

C. Ek and J. Ek, brothers from Duluth, promptly entered the lists as cochampions. Mrs. V. Ek, not to be outdone, claimed not only the woman’s title, but the mixed doubles championship. A former Duluth policeman said his name was C. Sy.

Then Fairmount, Minnesota, entered E. Py, farmer; Clinton, Iowa, put forward C. Au, J. Au, and W. Au, triple threats; Indiana offered Ed Py, inmate of Newcastle Jail; and Indianapolis made a poor try with Fix Ax.

In the end the palm went to Aaron A of Chicago, who went by A.A., a name that AP noted “leads all others in the Chicago telephone directory, alphabetically as well as longitudinally.” A’s ancestors had been jewelers in Saxony, and a philologist speculated that the surname derived from an old German word for river.

| Language · Oddities

A Crowded Verse

The names of 13 Jane Austen characters are hidden in the following lines as anagrams of complete consecutive words. For example, “was ill” yields WALLIS. (The names to be found are women’s first names and men’s surnames, as in Austen.) In most cases the anagrams are hidden in two words, but twice they’re in three, once in four, and once in a single word. What are they?

The other day when I was ill
And not a soul I knew came nigh,
Jane Austen was my daily fare —
I rather liked to be laid by.
Each line or page enthralls me quite,
I there can let no man deride;
I may be ill as a wight can be,
But, Jane with me, am satisfied.
In bed my ease is nil, yet I’ll
Be lying therein at any rate
Content. With Jane to chortle at
How can I rail at Fate?

Click for Answer
| Language · Literature · Poems · Puzzles

Mix and Match

In Strictly Speaking (1974), Edwin Newman points out that the names of American college presidents are strangely interchangeable: Columbia’s Nicholas Murray Butler would have projected the same impressive dignity if he’d been Nicholas Butler Murray or Butler Nicholas Murray. Kingman Brewster, president of Yale, might as well have been Brewster Kingman. Newman gives five pages of examples, drawn from the 1973 Yearbook of Higher Education:

Brage Golding, California State University
Harris L. Wofford, Jr., Bryn Mawr College
Thurston E. Manning, University of Bridgeport
Gibb Madsen, Hartnell College
Rexer Berndt, Fort Lewis College
Dumont Kenny, Temple Buell College
Woodfin P. Patterson, Jefferson Davis State Junior College
Imon E. Bruce, Southern State College
Cleveland Dennard, Washington Technical Institute
Culbreth Y. Melton, Emmanuel College
Pope A. Duncan, Georgia Southern College
Hudson T. Armerding, Wheaton College
Landrum R. Bolling, Earlham College
Mahlon A. Miller, Union College
Dero G. Downing, Western Kentucky University
Wheeler G. Merriam, Franklin Pierce College
Placidus H. Riley, St. Anselm’s College
Ferrel Heady, University of New Mexico
Lane D. Kilburn, King’s College
Hilton M. Briggs, South Dakota State University
Granville M. Sawyer, Texas Southern University

“Note also that the names are interchangeable up, down, diagonally, taking every other name, every third, fourth, fifth, and so on, at random, and — for parlor game purposes — any other way you can think of. In mixed clusters of three, especially when read or sung aloud, they are often enchanting.”

| Language

Orderly

The English name for 13,000,000,000,000,000,003,019,000,000,000, THIRTEEN NONILLION THREE TRILLION NINETEEN BILLION, is spelled with 1 B, 2 Hs, 3 Rs, 4 Os, 5 Ts, 6 Ls, 7 Es, 8 Is, and 9 Ns.

(Thanks, David.)

| Language

Showing and Telling

An honest number is a number n that can be described using exactly n letters. For example, 8 can be described as TWO CUBED, and 11 as TWO PLUS NINE.

In 2003, Bill Clagett found that

EIGHTEENTH ROOT OF EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHTY-FOUR QUATTUORDECILLION THREE HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR TREDECILLION SIX HUNDRED EIGHTY DUODECILLION EIGHT HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX UNDECILLION SIX HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE DECILLION SIX HUNDRED THIRTY-SEVEN NONILLION ONE HUNDRED THREE OCTILLION NINETY SEPTILLION NINE HUNDRED EIGHTY-TWO SEXTILLION FIVE HUNDRED EIGHTY-ONE QUINTILLION FOUR HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT QUADRILLION SEVEN HUNDRED NINETY-FOUR TRILLION NINE HUNDRED THIRTEEN BILLION FOUR HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO MILLION NINE HUNDRED FIFTY-NINE THOUSAND EIGHTY-ONE

contains 461 letters.

More here.

| Language · Science & Math

More Postal Torture

https://archive.org/details/strand-1899-v-17/page/236/mode/2up?view=theater

Addressing communications to the post just for the pleasure of seeing whether the hard-worked authorities will be equal to deciphering them is perhaps not very considerate, but the officials are so very rarely found at fault that the laugh is almost always on their side. This phonographic postcard was delivered at the house of Mr. E.H. King, of Belle View House, Richmond, Surrey, who sent us the card within an hour and a half after he had posted it to himself locally.

That’s from the Strand, February 1899. “Phonographic” refers to a system of phonetic shorthand; this one must have been fairly well known if the G.P.O. deciphered it so quickly. Charles Dickens had to learn an early alphabetical shorthand for his work as a journalist; he adapted this later into a system of his own, some of which remains undeciphered.

| Language