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

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

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