The alphabet is not in alphabetical order...

Aich are ay bee dee doubleyou ee ef el em en ess ex eye jay jee kay kew oh pee see tee vee why you zed.

The heterophony of "ough" (or, I now pronounce you husband and wough?)

I sought to slough off my slough in Slough. Had I thought through houghs and lough troughs thoroughly enough though? A drought of homophony and a homographical hiccough ought with forethought be wrought as though nought...

Let us rest our eyes for a moment, as we prepare ourselves to consider the phenomenal flexibility of this terrific tetragram, impalpably illustrated by the pleasant progression from tough to thorough. Simply adding one letter each time, we reach a new word, invariably differing significantly in pronunciation from the rest of the sequence. Indeed, there is a multiplicity of routes, via either trough or though to through, with the tempting alternative destination of thought in case we're feeling adventurous.

A noteworthy pronunciatory peculiarity is to be found in the three parishes of Milton Keynes: Woughton, Loughton, and Broughton; all have different pronunciations of the combination ('Wufton', 'Lowton' (as in 'ow' not 'low'), and 'Brorton'). Sticking with the place-name theme, the two "ough"s in Loughborough are daring enough to be pronounced differently, in a logographical version of 'You say potato, I say poughtatough (see note (1)).'

Moments of such heterophonic happiness as these are prone to prompt profusions of plauditory poetry, and so it's only right that the following should follow:

I'm taught p-l-o-u-g-h
S'all be pronouncé "plow."
"Zat's easy w'en you know," I say,
"Mon Anglais, I'll get through!"

My teacher say zat in zat case,
O-u-g-h is "oo."
And zen I laugh and say to him,
"Zees Anglais make me cough."

He say "Not 'coo' but in zat word,
O-u-g-h is 'off,'"
"Oh, Sacre bleu! Such varied sounds
Of words make me hiccough!" (see (2))

Wherefrom, wherefore, and wherethrough? Quite.

(1) Yes I know it's meant to be tomato, but potato works better!

(2) O-U-G-H: A Fresh Hack at an Old Knot by Charles Battell Loomis

Contranyms - where it all started

Contronyms

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A synonym is a word that means the same as another. Necessary and required are synonyms. An antonym is a word that means the opposite of another. Wet anddry are antonyms. While synonyms and antonyms are not in themselves interesting, the complexities and irregularities of the English language sometimes make synonyms and antonyms interesting to explore. Many complexities result from words having multiple definitions. A trivial example is a word with synonyms that aren't synonyms of each other, the word beam, for example, having the synonyms bar and shine. Similarly, some words have antonyms that are neither synonyms nor antonyms of each other but completely unrelated: the word right, for example, having the antonyms wrong and left.
A more interesting paradox occurs with the word groom, which does not really have an antonym in the strictest sense but has an opposite of sorts in the word bride, which can be used as a prefix to create a synonym, bridegroom.
The word contronym (also antagonym) is used to refer to words that, by some freak of language evolution, are their own antonyms. Both contronym and antagonymare neologisms; however, there is no alternative term that is more established in the English language.
Contronyms are special cases of homographs (two words with the same spelling). Some examples:

• anabasis - military advance, military retreat
• apology - admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; formal defense of what you think, say, or do
• aught - all, nothing
• bolt - secure, run away
• by - multiplication (e.g., a three by five matrix), division (e.g., dividing eight by four)
• chuffed - pleased, annoyed
• cleave - separate, adhere
• clip - fasten, detach
• consult - ask for advice, give advice
• copemate - partner, antagonist
• custom - usual, special
• deceptively smart - smarter than one appears, dumber than one appears
• dike - wall, ditch
• discursive - proceeding coherently from topic to topic, moving aimlessly from topic to topic
• dollop - a large amount, a small amount
• dust - add fine particles, remove fine particles
• enjoin - prescribe, prohibit
• fast - quick, unmoving
• first degree - most severe (e.g., murder), least severe (e.g., burn)
• fix - restore, castrate
• flog - criticize harshly, promote aggressively
• garnish - enhance (e.g., food), curtail (e.g., wages)
• give out - produce, stop production
• grade - incline, level
• handicap - advantage, disadvantage
• help - assist, prevent (e.g., "I can't help it if...")
• left - remaining, departed from
• liege - sovereign lord, loyal subject
• mean - average, excellent (e.g., "plays a mean game")
• off - off, on (e.g., "the alarm went off")
• out - visible (e.g., stars), invisible (e.g., lights)
• out of - outside, inside (e.g., "work out of one's home")
• oversight - error, care
• pitted - with the pit in, with the pit removed
• put out - extinguish, generate (e.g., something putting out light)
• quiddity - essence, trifling point
• quite - rather, completely
• ravel - tangle, disentangle
• rent - buy use of, sell use of
• rinky-dink - insignificant, one who frequents RinkWorks
• sanction - approve, boycott
• sanguine - hopeful, murderous (obsolete synonym for "sanguinary")
• screen - show, hide
• seed - add seeds (e.g., "to seed a field"), remove seeds (e.g., "to seed a tomato")
• skinned - with the skin on, with the skin removed
• strike - hit, miss (in baseball)
• table - propose (in the United Kingdom), set aside (in the United States)
• transparent - invisible, obvious
• unbending - rigid, relaxing
• variety - one type (e.g., "this variety"), many types (e.g., "a variety")
• wear - endure through use, decay through use
• weather - withstand, wear away
• wind up - end, start up (e.g., a watch)
• with - alongside, against

Finding such idiosyncrasies in slang is much easier. The word bad can be used as slang to mean good. The word bomb has two slang meanings: failure (as usually used in the United States) and success (as usually used in the United Kingdom).
Some noteworthy antonyms aren't homographs (words that are spelled the same) but homophones (words that are pronounced the same). Some of these include:

• aural, oral - heard, spoken
• erupt, irrupt - burst out, burst in
• petalless, petalous - lacking petals, having petals
• raise, raze - erect, tear down

Homophones that are near-antonyms:

• reckless, wreckless

From Fun With Words.

The Heretical Suffix

It takes a particular breed of suffix to end one of the English language's most famous long words, and it is to this (double) suffix that we now turn. We shall sadly find not only heterodoxy but antilogicism, as we stare into the defiant face of that fundamentally illogical suffixture: -arianism.

The eponymous Arius (c. 250-336 AD (1)), though not the heresy's originator, greatly intensified the theological controversy with his widespread teaching of the subordination of the Logos, catchily captured in song in the maxim: "There was when he was not." He was perhaps the first to whom "The devil has all the best music" was aptly applied. Quite the contrarian, as if denying the Word's eternality were not enough, a sting in the suffixional tail threatens to challenge the suffixual supremacy of the Logos, putting the "-ism" into scepticism, gnosticism, and, ultimately, anarchism (see (2)).

If it weren't for the doctrinarianism, authoritarianism, Trinitarian egalitarianism, and antidisestablishmentarianism of the First Council of Nicaea (3) in AD 325 (4), we might yet have denied the sovereignty of the Logos; we clearly shall have to adapt (not adopt (5)) our naive criterion from the previous post, in light of the generous suffusion of the Word into all words (6).

We end this post then, with the Words within a word: "logology", "the science of words", "the pursuit of word puzzles or puzzling words" (7), or, most appropriately in its allusion to Trinitarianism, "the field of recreational linguistics, an activity that encompasses a wide variety of word games and wordplay" (8).

It only remains for our resident armchair logologists, philologists, etymologists, and semanticians to say a fond "au revoir", and to invite the reader to consider the joys that await us all in the blessèd realms of the preprefixes, and the multilingual prefixions, both of whose treasures have been teasingly foreshadowed above.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism

(2) http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ism/

(3) it was nice there

(4) and later Constantinople in AD 381

(5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoptionism - another historical heresy with linguistic implications

(6) Col 1:16; John 1:3

(7) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/logology

(8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logology

The Prefix Returns

Some would opine that, given the astonishing dearth of prefixes in the foregoing post, the following saturation thereof was inevitable. In such cases, an appeal to a law of statistics might even be made. Far be it from me to decry such a proposition. Whatever part the ineluctable has played however, we will proceed to ask the question: which word is the king (or queen), nay, the sovereign of all suffixes?

The criterion I submit as being decisive here is the number of possible prefixes to which a given candidate can be affixed. As an apposite example, we shall first examine the suffix of suffix: "fix". Within the family of affixes alone, we find at least ten official prefixes (see note (1) below), and a quick search will uncover a few of their more controversial cousins: subfix, unfix, reaffix, antefix, and arguably even crucifix.

Can we beat 15? Wikipedia comes to our aid again with a fairly (though not fully) comprehensive list of English (derivational) prefixes (see (2)), which provides us with a glimpse of the potential powerhouses we might yet find, whilst whetting our neologistic appetites as we see the part we may play in becoming suffixual 'king'-makers. Thus far my Warwickian aspirations have led me to propose that the position may well belong to that great poser which has interposed itself liberally into this very sentence's composition. With prefixual powers well into the thirties (3), I challenge the reader who opposes this supposition not merely to impose their own presupposition, but rather to expose the inadequacies by juxtaposing another with the strength to depose and dispose of the alleged pretender.

In fact, the task is greater than I have admitted, for I have since found another suffix, whose metaphorical bootstraps "pose" is quite unworthy of tying. This new ruler is synonymous with a severely solipsistic autonomy, or at least with its homonym, as it almost doubles its predecessor in suffixability (4). We'll no doubt delve further into its riches in future posts (see the forthcoming homage to the contronym (itself the synonym of antagonym and autoantonym)), but for now it only remains to return our new leader to relative anonymity, with little time for eulogy, in light of the surely unsurpassable supremacy of the word to end (and begin?) all words: the Word itself (5). No analogy is possible without tautology, and we are left with two mindbending questions from our new master: is autology autology? Worse still, is heterology heterology? (6) Such an ominous enquiry calls for a prompt end to this my far from augural post. For the prefix has returned, with a prefixation for avengeance.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affix#Positional_categories_of_affixes

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefix#List_of_English_derivational_prefixes

(3) http://www.scrabblefinder.com/ends-with/pose/

(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-onym#Words_that_end_in_-onym

(5) http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/logy/

(6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autological_word#Paradox

Lost Positives - a wonderful poem by David McCord, “Gloss”

I know a little man both ept and ert.
An intro-? extro-? No, he’s just a vert.
Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,
His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.

When life turns sipid and the mind is traught,
The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.
Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,
My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.

http://www.lostpositives.com

Unusual words

Interrobang

a printed punctuation mark (‽),available only in some typefaces,designed to combine the questionmark (?) and the exclamation point(!), indicating a mixture of queryand interjection, as after a rhetoricalquestion. 

Time for some Contronyms

A word that can mean the opposite of itself is a contranym.

Examples:

bound (bound for Chicago, moving) 
bound (tied up, unable to move)

cleave (to cut apart) 
cleave (to seal together)

buckle (buckle your pants -- to hold together) 
buckle (knees buckled -- to collapse, fall aprt)

citation (award for good behavior) 
citation (penalty for bad behavior)

clip (attach to) 
clip (cut off from)

cut (get into a line) 
cut (get out of a class)

dust (remove dust) 
dust (apply dust -- fingerprints)

fast (moving rapidly) 
fast (fixed in position)

left (remaining) 
left (having gone)

literally (literally) 
literally (figuratively)

moot (arguable) 
moot (not worthy of argument)

oversight (watchful control) 
oversight (something not noticed)

They are also known as antagonyms or autoantonyms

See Also: Hyponym; Homophone; Homonym;Homograph; Word; Polysemy; Synonym

First Things First

In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and then they created Man and let us enjoy being with and playing with the Word and words in general.

I hope these musings, riffs, explorations and pun runs will stimulate creativity & discussion, entertain, and edify.