Bootstraps

The 45-letter pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is often cited as one of the longest words in English — it’s been recognized both by Merriam-Webster and by the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED Supplement traced it to a 1936 puzzle book by Frank Scully called Bedside Manna, defining it as “a disease caused by ultra-microscopic particles of sandy volcanic dust.” But in fact it had appeared first in a Feb. 23, 1935, story in the New York Herald Tribune:

Puzzlers Open 103rd Session Here by Recognizing 45-Letter Word

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis succeeded electrophotomicrographically as the longest word in the English language recognized by the National Puzzlers’ League at the opening session of the organization’s 103d semi-annual meeting held yesterday at the Hotel New Yorker.

The puzzlers explained that the forty-five-letter word is the name of a special form of silicosis caused by ultra-microscopic particles of silica volcanic dust …

At the meeting NPL president Everett M. Smith had claimed the word was legitimate, but in fact he’d coined it himself. Distinguished by the newspaper, it found its way into Scully’s book and thence into the dictionaries, “surely one of the greatest ironies in the history of logology,” according to author Chris Cole. Today it’s recognized as long but phony — Oxford changed its definition to “an artificial long word said to mean a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust.”

(Chris Cole, “The Biggest Hoax,” Word Ways 22:4 [November 1989], 205-206.)

| Hoaxes · Language

Perfect Numbers

From Lee Sallows:

As the reader can check, the English number names less than “twenty” are composed using 16 different letters of the alphabet. We assign a distinct integral value to each of these as follows:

E   F   G   H   I   L   N   O   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Z  
3   9   6   1  -4   0   5  -7  -6  -1   2   8  -3   7  11  10

The result is the following run of so called “perfect” numbers:

Z+E+R+O       =   10 + 3 – 6 – 7          =    0
O+N+E         =   –7 + 5 + 3              =    1
T+W+O         =    2 + 7 – 7              =    2
T+H+R+E+E     =    2 + 1 – 6 + 3 + 3      =    3
F+O+U+R       =    9 – 7 + 8 – 6          =    4
F+I+V+E       =    9 – 4 – 3 + 3          =    5
S+I+X         =   –1 – 4 + 11             =    6
S+E+V+E+N     =   –1 + 3 – 3 + 3 + 5      =    7
E+I+G+H+T     =    3 – 4 + 6 + 1 + 2      =    8
N+I+N+E       =    5 – 4 + 5 + 3          =    9
T+E+N         =    2 + 3 + 5              =   10
E+L+E+V+E+N   =    3 + 0 + 3 – 3 + 3 + 5  =   11
T+W+E+L+V+E   =    2 + 7 + 3 + 0 – 3 + 3  =   12

The above is due to a computer program in which nested Do-loops try out all possible values in systematically incremented steps. The above solution is one of two sets coming in second place to the minimal (lowest set of values) solution seen here:

 E   F   G   H   I   L   N   O   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Z 
–2  –6   0  –7   7   9   2   1   4   3  10   5   6  –9  –4  –3

But why does the list above stop at twelve? Given that 3 + 10 = 13, and assuming that THREE, TEN and THIRTEEN are all perfect, we have T+H+I+R+T+E+E+N = T+H+R+E+E + T+E+N. But cancelling common letters on both sides of this equation yields E = I, which is to say E and I must share the same value, contrary to our requirement above that the letters be assigned distinct values. Thus, irrespective of letter values selected, if it includes THREE and TEN, no unbroken run of perfect numbers can exceed TWELVE. This might be decribed as a formal proof that THIRTEEN is unlucky.

But not all situations call for an unbroken series of perfect numbers. Sixteen distinct numbers occur in the following, eight positive, eight negative. This lends itself to display on a checkerboard:

sallows perfect numbers

Choose any number on the board. Call out the letters that spell its name, adding up their associated numbers when on white squares, subtracting when on black. Their sum is the number you selected.

(Thanks, Lee.)

| Language · Science & Math

Half Measures

https://archive.org/details/strand-1897-v-14/page/396/mode/2up?view=theater

When we read type we imagine that we read the whole of the type — but that is not so; we only notice the upper half of each letter. You can easily prove this for yourself by covering up the upper half of the line with a sheet of paper (being careful to hold the paper exactly in the middle of the letters), and you will not, without great difficulty, decipher a single word. Now place the paper over the lower half of a line, and you can read it without the slightest difficulty.

— George Lindsay Johnson, “Some Curious Optical Illusions,” Strand, October 1897

11/04/2024 UPDATE: In the experimental writing system Aravrit, devised by typeface designer Liron Lavi Turkenich, the upper half of each letter is Arabic and the lower half is Hebrew:

(Thanks to reader Djed F Re.)

| Language · Oddities

Canting Arms

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hensbroek.svg

The village of Hensbroek in North Holland takes its name from the personal name Hein and the Dutch cognate of brook, i.e., “Henry’s brook.”

Magnificently, the municipal coat of arms interprets it instead as “hen’s breeches” — and depicts a chicken wearing trousers.

| History · Language

New Color

In a 1985 op-ed in the New York Times, writer Maggie Sullivan proposed some irregular verbs to match go, went, gone:

furlough, furlent, furlon: “All the soldiers were furlon except those the captain furlent last week.”
subdue, subdid, subdone: “Nothing else could have subdone him the way her violet eyes subdid him.”
frisbee, friswas, frisbeen: “Although he had never frisbeen before, after watching the tournament he friswas every day, trying to frisbee as the champions friswere.”
pay, pew, pain: “He had pain for not choosing a wife more carefully.”
conceal, console, consolen: “After the murder, Jake console the weapon.”
seesaw, sawsaw, seensaw: “While the children sawsaw, the old man thought of long ago when he had seensaw.”
fit, fat, fat: “The vest fat Joe, whereas the jacket would have fat a thinner man.”
ensnare, ensnore, ensnorn: “In the ’60s and ’70s, Sominex ads ensnore many who had never been ensnorn by ads before.”
displease, displose, displosen: “By the look on her face, I could tell she was displosen.”

Commemorate could emulate eat: “At the banquet to commemoreat Herbert Hoover, spirits were high, and by the end of the evening many other Republicans had been commemoreaten.”

(Maggie Sullivan, “You, Too, Can Strengthen English, and Write Good,” New York Times, May 4, 1985.)

| Language

In a Word

calophantic
adj. pretending or making a show of excellence

velleity
n. a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it

fode
v. to lead on with delusive expectations

magnoperate
v. to magnify the greatness of

Roman diplomat Sidonius Apollinaris describes the hunting skill of Visigoth king Theodoric II:

If the chase is the order of the day, he joins it, but never carries his bow at his side, considering this derogatory to royal state. … He will ask you beforehand what you would like him to transfix; you choose, and he hits. If there is a miss … your vision will mostly be at fault, and not the archer’s skill.

(Quoted in Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, 2012.)

| History · Language · Society

Why Not?

From a letter from English scholar Walter Raleigh to Mrs. F. Gotch, July 2, 1898:

Doe you lyke my newe phansy in the matere of Spelynge? I have growen wery of Spelynge wordes allwaies in one waye and now affecte diversite. The cheif vertew of my reform is that it makes the spelynge express the moode of the wryter. Frinsns, if yew fealin frenly, ye kin spel frenly-like. Butte if yew wyshe to indicate that thogh nott of hyghe bloode, yew are compleately atte one wyth the aristokrasy you canne double alle youre consonnantts, prollonge mosstte of yourre vowelles, and addde a fynalle ‘e’ wherevverre itte iss reququirred.

A later poem:

Wishes of an Elderly Man, Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914

I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!

| Language · Poems