In his 1968 novel Enderby Outside, Anthony Burgess contrived to use the word onions four times in a row:
Then, instead of expensive mouthwash, he had breathed on Hogg-Enderby, bafflingly (for no banquet would serve, because of the known redolence of onions, onions) onions. ‘Onions,’ said Hogg.
Burgess could take playfulness to excess — the first volume of the Enderby quartet got him into a bit of trouble.
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” — Neil Armstrong
(Thanks, Hugh.)
When used as verbs, BEST and WORST have the same meaning.
For their investiture as poet laureate, Wordsworth and Tennyson both borrowed the same suit from Samuel Rogers.
Unfortunately, Rogers was a small man. When Tennyson had trouble fitting into the suit, he asked a servant how Wordsworth had fared. “They had great difficulty in getting him into them,” the man replied.
J.G. Christopher, of Minneapolis, Minn., is the possessor of a canary bird, the voice of which has been developed in a peculiarly painstaken manner, so that now this ‘educated’ songster can successfully render the well-known air, ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave.’ The bird will commence to warble like any other of these pets, and after uttering a few notes will immediately strike into the tune, and when its voice has attained full height the above tune will be sung entire, and in a manner that sounds singularly melodious and attractive, literally setting to note its natural vocal powers. This was only achieved after the most diligent and patient attention. As soon as the bird was old enough to pick up a living it was put in a room apart from all others, and a music-box also placed in the apartment and kept perpetually going, so that this singular pupil had nothing to learn from but that. After four months of such apprentice-ship, the owner was rewarded by hearing his little favorite render ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’ as naturally and perfectly as if that was the song of its ancestors.
— James Baird McClure, ed., Entertaining Anecdotes From Every Available Source, 1879
Readers in the Bodleian Library at Oxford must take an oath that they will not kindle fires in the library.
BOOKKEEPER has three consecutive pairs of like letters. SUBBOOKKEEPER has four.
What’s the limit? Honolulu English teacher Joel D. Gaines proposed BALLOONNOONNOOKKEEPPOOBAH, “an agent who sits on balloons at noon in a corner, in order to earn his keep.” It has 10 consecutive pairs.
Thackeray was at a St. Louis dinner, when one waiter said to another: ‘That is the celebrated Mr. Thackeray.’ ‘What’s he done?’ said the other. ‘Blessed if I know,’ was the answer.
— James Baird McClure, ed., Entertaining Anecdotes From Every Available Source, 1879
In 1836 James Daniel Royster began a curious family tradition — he named all his children after states.
He named his sons Iowa Michigan Royster, Arkansas Delaware Royster, Wisconsin Illinois Royster, Vermont Connecticut Royster, and Oregon Minnesota Royster.
The daughters were named Virginia Carolina Royster and Indiana Georgia Royster.
The practice came to a wider knowledge a century later — Royster’s great-grandson, Vermont Connecticut Royster, won two Pulitzer Prizes as editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal.
University of Toronto math professor Ed Barbeau can take a rectangular piece of paper and, using only a pair of scissors, produce the object pictured above. How?
