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

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

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