In 1996 recreational linguist Ross Eckler composed the following “transdeletion pyramid”:
A N T I C E R E M O N I A L I S T
N O N M A T E R I A L I T I E S
O R N A M E N T A L I T I E S
I N T E R L A M I N A T E S
M A T E R N A L I T I E S
M A T R I L I N E A T E
T R I L A M I N A T E
T E R M I N A L I A
L A T I M E R I A
M A T E R I A L
T A L I E R A
R E T A I L
A L T E R
R A T E
T E A
A T
A
Each word is derived from the one above, dropping one letter and scrambling the rest.
One last unlucky elephant. In the early 1900s, Thomas Edison was locked in a historic “war of currents” with George Westinghouse. Edison wanted the nation to use direct current; Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla wanted alternating current.
That sounds like a pretty tame dispute, but Edison went to some horrific lengths to sway public opinion. To prove that AC was dangerous, he began electrocuting stray cats and dogs. He said they were being “Westinghoused.” He also secretly funded the first electric chair, which ran on AC but was underpowered — its first use resulted in “an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging,” in the words of one witness.
Anyway, around this time a Coney Island elephant named Topsy was condemned to death for killing three men in three years. Hanging was out, thanks to the ASPCA, so Edison suggested they send 6,600 volts of AC through her. So on Jan. 4, 1903, 1,500 people gathered at the amusement park and watched as Topsy ate carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide and was Westinghoused. She died quickly, reportedly, but Edison recorded the whole thing on film, and later played Electrocuting an Elephant to audiences around the country.
He lost the fight for DC power, though. There’s some justice.
A aptronym is a name that is aptly suited to its owner’s occupation. Examples:
And Joe Strummer, guitarist for The Clash.
Another case of man’s inhumanity to elephants. Don’t even read this one. Seriously.
In 1826, the owners of a London menagerie decided to kill Chunee, their 5-ton Indian elephant. The animal had been docile for years — Lord Byron said “I wish he was my butler” — but he grew violent toward the end of his life, perhaps aggravated by pain from a rotten tusk. When, on a rampage, he killed one of his keepers, it was decided he was too dangerous to keep.
Unfortunately, Chunee wouldn’t eat poison. So a group of musketeers were summoned to his cage, a trusted keeper ordered him to kneel, and the soldiers began to fire volleys into his chest and legs. This continued for more than an hour, during which one witness reported that the sound of the elephant’s “agony had been much more alarming than that made by the soldier’s guns.” Even with 152 musketballs in him, the elephant continued to live, kneeling in a cage full of blood, so they had to dispatch him, finally, with a sword.
News of the slaughter inspired numerous poems and even a successful play, but owner Edward Cross sought a profit even in the animal’s death. He charged a shilling to see the body dissected; he sold the hide (which took nine butchers 12 hours to remove); and he put Chunee’s skeleton on display in his old cage — with the bullet holes in his skull clearly visible.
Isaac Asimov proposed a simple way to distinguish chemists from non-chemists: Ask them to read aloud the word unionized.
Non-chemists will pronounce it “union-ized”, he said — and chemists will pronounce it “un-ionized.”
Never dare the British navy. Logan Rock, in Cornwall, had been famous as a “rocking stone” — the 80-ton boulder was “obsequious to the gentlest touch” but stood “as fixt as Snowdon,” in the words of poet William Mason.
Lt. Hugh Goldsmith apparently took that as a challenge, and in April 1824 he led the crew of HMS Nimble in tumbling the boulder from its clifftop perch.
His satisfaction was short-lived, however. Outraged at the loss of a tourist attraction, the local residents insisted that Goldsmith restore the stone, and six months later Logan Rock was hauled back to its perch, balanced — and chained in place.
There are 3 letters in the Italian word for 6, sei.
There are 4 letters in the Italian word for 8, otto.
There are 5 letters in the Italian word for 10, dieci.
There are 6 letters in the Italian word for 12, dodici.
A capitonym is a word that changes meaning when it’s capitalized:
A herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.
An isogram is a word in which no letter is repeated:
Theoretically the limit is 26 letters, but that’s an Everest that no one has scaled. Dmitri Borgmann has conquered some lesser peaks with THUMBSCREW-JAPINGLY (18 letters, “as if mocking a thumbscrew”) and PUBVEXINGFJORD-SCHMALTZY (23 letters, “as if in the manner of the extreme sentimentalism generated in some individuals by the sight of a majestic fjord, which sentimentalism is annoying to the clientele of an English inn”). Maybe what we lack is imagination.
It’s not only 007 who communicates in code. Butchers in Australia speak a secret language called Rechtub Klat (“butcher talk”), in which words are pronounced backward.
Why should butchers need a secret language? So they can talk about the customers:
Keep your ears open.
