OED on the travelling "N"

This article reminded me of all the times we played with the homophony of an xxx and a nxxx together with using words like adult to say your are adult and I am another dult

Happy memories!!

:)

Love Labour's Lost Act IV Scene II - delightful

SIR NATHANIEL

Very reverend sport, truly; and done in the testimony
of a good conscience.

HOLOFERNES

The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe
as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in
the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven;
and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra,
the soil, the land, the earth.

SIR NATHANIEL

Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly
varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I
assure ye, it was a buck of the first head.

HOLOFERNES

Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.

DULL

'Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES

Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of
insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of
explication; facere, as it were, replication, or
rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his
inclination, after his undressed, unpolished,
uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather,
unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to
insert again my haud credo for a deer.

DULL

I said the deer was not a haud credo; twas a pricket.

HOLOFERNES

Twice-sod simplicity, his coctus!
O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

SIR NATHANIEL

Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred
in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he
hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not
replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in
the duller parts:
And such barren plants are set before us, that we
thankful should be,
Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that
do fructify in us more than he.
For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,
So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school:
But omne bene, say I; being of an old father's mind,
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

DULL

You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit
What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five
weeks old as yet?

HOLOFERNES

Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.

DULL

What is Dictynna?

SIR NATHANIEL

A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.

HOLOFERNES

The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,
And raught not to five weeks when he came to
five-score.
The allusion holds in the exchange.

DULL

'Tis true indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.

HOLOFERNES

God comfort thy capacity! I say, the allusion holds
in the exchange.

DULL

And I say, the pollusion holds in the exchange; for
the moon is never but a month old: and I say beside
that, 'twas a pricket that the princess killed.

HOLOFERNES

Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph
on the death of the deer? And, to humour the
ignorant, call I the deer the princess killed a pricket.

SIR NATHANIEL

Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge; so it shall
please you to abrogate scurrility.

HOLOFERNES

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.
The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty
pleasing pricket;
Some say a sore; but not a sore, till now made
sore with shooting.
The dogs did yell: put L to sore, then sorel jumps
from thicket;
Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores
one sorel.
Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more L.

SIR NATHANIEL

A rare talent!

DULL

[Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws
him with a talent.

HOLOFERNES

This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a
foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures,
shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions,
revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of
memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and
delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the
gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am
thankful for it.

SIR NATHANIEL

Sir, I praise the Lord for you; and so may my
parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by
you, and their daughters profit very greatly under
you: you are a good member of the commonwealth.

HOLOFERNES

Mehercle, if their sons be ingenuous, they shall
want no instruction; if their daughters be capable,
I will put it to them: but vir sapit qui pauca
loquitur; a soul feminine saluteth us.

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

---

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