Obscure words from Paul Hellweg’s Insomniac’s Dictionary, 1989:

tomecide: the destruction of a book

lampadomancy: augury by torch flame

shotclog: a drinking companion tolerated because he pays for the drinks

allonym: the name of a real person borrowed by an author

ephelides: freckles

feuterer: someone who keeps a dog

hypnopedia: the process of learning while asleep (e.g. by listening to a recording)

girouettism: the practice of frequently altering personal opinions to follow popular trends

panchreston: a broadly inclusive thesis that purports to cover all aspects of its subject but usually ends up as an unacceptable oversimplification

grangousier: one who will swallow anything

A few facetious Latinisms collected by Michael Quinion:

ferroequinologist: a railroad enthusiast (“one who studies the iron horse”)

infracaninophile: a lover of the underdog

anti-fogmatic: an alcoholic drink that counteracts the effects of fog

In 2014 a Futility Closet reader led me to elephantocetomachia, “a fight between an elephant and a whale,” a valuable word assembled from spare parts. And my notes say that vacansopapurosophobia means “fear of blank paper” — a useful expression, even if it’s not in the dictionary.

In a 1993 segment on National Public Radio, Will Shortz challenged listeners to construct sentences that use only two consonants, such as “Can Connie, a nice niece in Canaan, can-can on a canoe in uncanny innocence?”

The winner, sent in by Dawne Bear and Rachel Chanin, was “See Tess taste-test Sissy’s sassy tea to attest to its tastiest status.” Other entries:

• Beddy-bye, baby boy! Bid Daddy bye-bye! (Jim Hamilton)
• Babs’ boss, Bobb, sobs as Bea’s base beau, Bubba, abuses sea bass. (Roxanne Bogucka)
• A good guide dog did guide Dad. (Joe Cahill, Susan Morse)
• Did dull addled Lady Della deal old ally, idle loaded Daddy Leo, a leaden dolly load o’ dilled eel? (Dorothy Thayer)
• Dear Radio Reader: Did Eduardo, a rodeo rider, dare ride a rare red doe, or did Dario, a dour dude, roar “I rode a ruder, redder deer”? Adieu, Dierdre. (Bernell Scott)
• At tea, a tattooed idiot did ode to a dead toad (a tad odd!). (Matt Hulen)
• Otto, Thea! Out to the auto to toot to the heath! Tote the tot that hath the teeth to eat the hat! (Uh-oh, it hit Thea.) Aha, tie the hat to the tot! Ta-ta! (Bruce and Barbara Lessey)
• Sally, a sassy lass, says “Susie is a souse — also loose”. Sly Susie says “I’ll sue!” (Aarne Hartikka)
• A little tale to titillate — title: Lolita. (Toby Gottfried)
• Name me: I am anyone, I am no one; I’m an anima, a meanie, a ninny, a mommy in a muumuu, a nun in a mini; I am many; I am one ­– I am Man. (Wayne Eastman)
• At a roar in a ruin near our nunnery, I ran in a rare noon rain. (Nancy Gannon)
• Sue supposes Pa possesses poise as Pa passes Sue pea soup. Sue, pious as a spouse, passes Pa pie. (Jay Cary)
• “Wow,” we roar, “we are aware we wore wire a wry way. We’re a wee raw! We rue!” (Sylvia Coogan)

In presenting these in Word Ways the following May, editor Ross Eckler noted that “No one discovered that palindromes sometimes work: too hot to hoot; Madam, I’m Adam; name no one man.”

In the 1990s, South Baltimore native Gordon Beard compiled a series of phrasebooks to help bewildered travelers understand his city’s residents:

amblanz — ambulance
bobwar — barbed wire
corter — quarter
flare — flower
goff — golf
har — hire
keerful — careful
mare — mayor
neck store — next door
orning — awning
plooshin — pollution
roolty — royalty
twunny — twenty
varse — virus
warsh — wash
yewmid — humid

John Goodspeed, for 17 years a columnist at the Baltimore Evening Sun, had compiled his own list in the 1960s:

ahrsh — Irish
chowld — child
dayon — down
harrid — Howard
koor — car
larnix — larynx
nass — nice
owen — on
shares — showers
urshter — oyster

Apparently the confusion has persisted for decades. “The life of a Baltimore Army lieutenant may have been saved by Baltimore during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II,” Goodspeed once reported. “Military police suspected him of being a German spy in an American uniform, but an M.P. from Baltimore heard the lieutenant pronounce his home town as ‘Balamer’ and passed him as genuine. Only a native can say it that way.”

A popular puzzle asks the solver to punctuate the following:

John where Willie had had had had had had had had had had had full marks.

The common answer is

John, where Willie had had “had,” had had “had had”; “had had” had had full marks.

But in 1955 a contributor to Eureka pointed out that a competing solver might have reversed the two phrases:

John, where Willie had had “had had,” had had “had”; “had had” had had full marks.

And in that case we might observe:

In the punctuation of the above, A, where B had had “… had had ‘had,’ had had ‘had had’; ‘had had’ had had …”, had had “… had had ‘had had,’ had had ‘had’; ‘had had’ had had …”; “had had had had had had had had had had had” had had two possible interpretations.

That observation itself can be punctuated in two different ways — a remark that might be communicated using an even longer string of hads. And so on forever — “there exist intelligible sentences containing (14 × 3ⁿ – 3) successive had‘s, where n is any non-negative integer.” “The solution of this recurrence relation is left as an exercise for the student.”

(“By Induction,” Eureka 18 [November 1955], 14. See Over and Out.)