Merriam-Webster points out something I’d never noticed: In many languages, the word for night consists of the word for eight preceded by the letter N:

English: N + eight = Night
German: N + acht = Nacht
French: N + huit = Nuit
Spanish: N + ocho = Noche
Italian: N + otto = Notte
Portuguese: N + oito = Noite

It’s a coincidence. Romance languages derive their words for eight and night from the Latin octo and noctem, and the Germanic languages get them from the Old High German ahto and the Germanic naht. In each case the similarity of the sounds is just happenstance.

(Thanks, Sharon.)

In each of these pairs of nonsense words, which is funnier?

• quingel vs. heashes
• prousup vs. mestins
• finglam vs. cortsio
• witypro vs. octeste
• rembrob vs. sectori
• pranomp vs. anotain
• fityrud vs. tessina

If you’re like most people, you’ll find the first word in each pair funnier than the second. In a 2015 study, University of Alberta psychologist Chris Westbury found that the difference is explained surprisingly well by Shannon entropy, which here measures the unlikelihood of each combination of letters: Outlandish specimens such as yuzz-a-ma-tuzz, oobleck, truffula, and sneetch, all from Dr. Seuss, seem funnier than, say, clester, which might plausibly be a real word. (Schopenhauer had argued that humor results from the violation of expectations.)

“The results show that the bigger the difference in the entropy between the two words, the more likely the subjects were to choose the way we expected them to,” Westbury said. Indeed, the most accurate subject chose correctly 92 percent of the time. “To be able to predict with that level of accuracy is amazing. You hardly ever get that in psychology, where you get to predict what someone will choose 92 percent of the time.”

Interestingly, Westbury had to omit vulgar-sounding nonwords (whong, dongl, shart, focky, clunt) before he even got started — these were so consistently considered funny that they would have interfered with the rest of the examination.

(Chris Westbury, et al., “Telling the World’s Least Funny Jokes: On the Quantification of Humor as Entropy,” Journal of Memory and Language 86 [2016]: 141-156.)

In 1903, Gilbert Woglom of New York composed “The Tramp’s Gratitude,” a musical composition in which the names of the notes, taken successively, spell out a poem:

A bad-faced, faded, aged cad
Begged a feed, a bed, bedad.
Bedded, fed, a café added,
Bed, bag, baggage, egad, cad cabbaged.

The longest English word that can be spelled with musical note names alone is CABBAGE-FACED.

balneal
adj. pertaining to a warm bath

“Deddicacion” of Scottish philologist James Elphinstone’s 1786 proposal on spelling reform, Propriety Ascertained in Her Picture:

To’ dhe KING.

Sir,

Augustus found hiz Language ripe for immortallity: hiz smiles bade Roman Lerning ascertain Propriety in her Picture. A LEO’s goolden days gave rizing Tempels to’ ring widh hightened harmony; gave, not onely a Raphael to’ paint, but a Vida to sing. Reviving Art and Science danced down hand in hand. LEWIS, fostering Genius, and founding Accademies, rendered France dhe admiracion ov dhe World, and her Language dhe Diccion ov it. YOOR MADJESTY, emmulous no les ov preceding, dhan ov contemporary Glory; and finding Glory, onely in dhe improovment ov mankind; haz dained, not merely by pattronage ov dhe sublimest Muzic, and by dhe institucion ov a Brittish Acaddemy, to’ raiz rivals to’ dhe moast exquizite Artists ov Anticquity; but, by fixing Inglish Speech in Inglish Orthoggraphy, to’ secure dhe unfading luster ov Truith, and dhe unfailing succession ov a Horrace, a Boileau, and a Pope.

If an umbel individdual haz prezumed to’ attempt a task, hiddherto’ held arduous for Acaddemies; he hopes for pardon, onely az he shal be found to’ hav performed it: nor wil, in such case, dhe Smile be regretted, hwich constitutes him, widh so dutifool venneracion,

SIR,

YOOR MADJESTY’S

moast devotedly zellous,

az peculiarly onnored, Servant;

JAMES ELPHINSTONE.