[Screenwriter Harry] Kurnitz’ most quoted observation was made when he became involved in a running feud with Lynn Loesser, then the wife of Frank Loesser, the songwriter.
‘Lynn,’ Kurnitz said, ‘is the evil of two Loessers.’
— Richard Gehman, “The Little World of Harry Kurnitz,” Playboy, June 1958
contubernal
adj. living in the same tent
Synonyms for WRITER’S CRAMP collected by Dmitri Borgmann in 1987:
CHIROSPASM
WRITERS’ PALSY
GRAPHOSPASM
SCRIVENERS’ PALSY
MOGIGRAPHIA or MOGOGRAPHIA
PENMAN’S SPASM
WRITERS’ NEUROSIS
HYPERKINESIA
DYSGRAPHIA
WRITERS’ SPASM
A STUTTERING OF THE HAND
MOGIGRAPHIA has four principal forms: SPASTIC, PARALYTIC, NEURALGIC, and TREMULOUS. Borgmann wrote, “No longer need you suffer from the WRITER’S CRAMP of the masses — you can, instead, discourse eloquently and frequently about the plethora of more elegant-sounding ailments that I have made available to you!”
(Dmitri A. Borgmann, “Quelque Chose,” Word Ways 20:1 [February 1987], 44-53.)
Center Alley worse jester pore ladle gull hoe lift wetter stop-murder an toe heft-cisterns. Daze worming war furry wicket an shellfish parsons, spatially dole stop-murder, hoe dint lack Center Alley an, infect, word orphan traitor pore gull mar lichen ammonol dinner hormone bang. Oily inner moaning disk wicket oiled worming shorted, ‘Center Alley, gad otter bet, an goiter wark! Suture lacy ladle bomb! Shaker lake!’ an firm moaning tell gnat disk ratchet gull word heifer wark lacquer hearse toe kipper horsing ardor, washer heft-cistern’s closing, maker bets, gore tutor star fur perversions, cooker males, washer dashes an doe oily udder hoard wark. Nor wander pore Center Alley worse tarred an disgorged!
— Howard L. Chace, Anguish Languish, 1956
A certified poet from Slough,
Whose methods of rhyming were rough,
Retorted, “I see
That the letters agree
And if that’s not sufficient I’m through.”
— Clifford Witting
stillicide
n. the dropping of rainwater from the eaves of a house upon another’s land or roof
sub tegmine fagi
adv. under the cover of a beech tree
tenson
n. a contest in verse between rival troubadours
Carol Shields’ 2000 short story “Absence” does not contain the letter I:
She woke up early, drank a cup of strong, unsugared coffee, then sat down at her word processor. She knew more or less what she wanted to do, and that was to create a story that possessed a granddaughter, a Boston fern, a golden apple and a small blue cradle. But after she had typed half a dozen words, she found that one of the letters of the keyboard was broken, and, to make matters worse, a vowel, the very letter that attaches to the hungry self.
She resolves to write about it: “‘A woman sat down and wrote,’ she wrote.”
This diagram appears in a 1673 Portuguese composition inscribed to the Conde de Villaflor. The title explains, “Each circle is a verse, each verse two anagrams. The letters are composed by the numbers and the numbers by the letter, on the periphery of this globe.”
Following the instructions we can read around the outer circle the words ‘DOM SANCHO MANOEL.’ To each of the letters of this name a number is attributed, so that we have the numbers from 1 to 15, corresponding to the letters over which they are placed. In the inner circles those numbers are to be retranslated into letters and, if the reader does so, he will decipher the riddle and end up with the announced sonnet, in which the name DOM SANCHO MANOEL is found in an acrostic and in the twenty-eight anagrams (two in each line) formed by the combination of letters in those words.
Hatherly, a professor of Baroque literature at UC Berkeley, discovered the solution in an 18th-century manuscript:
D O Onde nam macho o sol o sol manchandome; M mancha nem dolo so nem sol mo achando: S sol como de manhan nam escolho, mando: A achem. Mando no sol Solon chamandome N Nome mancha do sol no cham. Sol andome C chamando sol nem o encham o sol. Mando H homem os do cannal nos mostre chamando O oh do mesmo cannal com al sonhandome, M Mancha medo no sol, sol nam, chamo onde A achem damno no sol, nem sol chamando N nam ilho escondam o sol, nome dam ancho O Onde o sol mancham, mal o sol ham conde E echo nam dam no sol em sol manchando L lem coando sonham no Leam Dom Sancho.
(From Merald E. Wrolstad and Dick Higgins, Visible Language, 1986.)
Electrical terms that Benjamin Franklin appears to have been the first to use, at least in print in English:
This list is from Carl Van Doren’s 1938 biography. “Though he never lost sight of what was being done in electricity during his whole lifetime, he was perfectly willing to have his contributions to it absorbed in the enlarging science. They were absorbed, and it is now difficult to trace the details of his influence.”
abactor
n. a person who steals livestock
epyllion
n. a little epic
hecatomped
adj. measuring 100 feet square
nouveau pauvre
n. a person who has recently become poor
pogonology
n. a treatise on beards
tessaraglot
adj. written or printed in four languages
transpontine
adj. beyond a bridge
truandise
n. fraudulent begging
(Thanks, Kevin.)