[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Let's have some new cliches.

Samuel Goldwyn

 

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that
will do them in.

Bradley's Bromide

 

Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence
that technically inept business types are known as "suits."

Paul Graham

 

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we
didn't.

Erica Jong

 

Be yourself is the worst advice you can give to some people.

Tom Masson

 

If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.

Dean Martin

 

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25 Words For Other Words

 

One of the intriguing things about languages is that they eventually develop
vocabularies comprehensive enough to describe themselves, often down to
their smallest units and components. Which means that, in addition to
drawing a distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives, we can talk
about things like synonyms (happy, content) and antonyms (happy, sad);
homophones (oar, ore, or) and homographs (bass the guitar, bass the fish);
and digraphs (two letters with a single sound, like sh or ch), diphthongs
(two vowel sounds in a single syllable, like “kah-oow” for cow), and
ligatures (two letters joined as a single character, like Æ).

 

Because English is a vast and grandiloquent language, straightforward
examples like these are just the tip of a linguistic iceberg. In fact, there
are dozens of little-known and little-used words referring to other words,
describing their form, their origin, or their use. So next time you spot
piripiri on a menu, or you’re trying to lip-read a conversation about “Ben’s
men’s pens,” you’ll know exactly how to refer to it.

 

1. Anacronym

An anacronym is an acronym that has become so naturalized in the language
that the phrase it originally stood for has now largely been forgotten. So
“self-contained underwater breathing apparatus” is better known as scuba,
and “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” is laser. And
Thomas A. Swift’s electric rifle? That’s a taser.

 

2. Ananym

An ananym is word coined by reversing the letters of an existing word, like
yob from “boy,” emordnilap from “palindrome” (more on those later), and mho
from “ohm.” Ananymic words are relatively rare, and you’re much more likely
to come across them as proper nouns (like Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo company) or
in fiction (like Samuel Butler’s Erehwon).

h

3. Auto-antonym

Also known as a contranym or a Janus word (after a dual-faced god in Roman
mythology), an auto-antonym is a word that can be its own opposite. So
dusting a house implies removing a fine powder, while dusting for
fingerprints involves applying a fine powder.

 

4. Autoglossonym

You’ve probably seen lists of these in airports or hotels, on ATMs or travel
documents, or if you’ve ever tried to change the language settings of a
webpage or cellphone: An autoglossonym is the name of a language written in
that language, like English, Français, Español, or Deutsch.

 

5. and 6. Autology and Heterology

An autological word is word that describes itself. So short is short. Common
isn’t rare. Unhyphenated doesn’t have a hyphen. Polysyllabic has more than
one syllable. Pronounceable is perfectly pronounceable. And sesquipedalian
is unquestionably sesquipedalian.

 

The opposite is a heterological word. So long isn’t long (in fact it’s
shorter than short). Hyphenated is unhyphenated. Symmetrical is
asymmetrical. Monosyllabic is polysyllabic. And there’s nothing at all wrong
with misspelled.

 

7. Backronym

A backronym is a word or phrase mistakenly believed to be an acronym, which
then becomes the subject of a “back-formed” (and completely untrue)
etymology. So posh doesn’t stand for “port out, starboard home,” and golf
doesn’t stand for “gentlemen only, ladies forbidden.” Nor does Adidas stand
for “all day I dream about sport,” and SOS doesn’t mean “save our souls,”
but is simply a memorable combination of dots and dashes (•••---•••) in
Morse code.

 

8. Capitonym

A capitonym is a word whose meaning changes depending on whether it is
capitalized or not, like Turkey and turkey, Polish and polish, or August and
august. Most capitonyms are entirely coincidental and the two words in
question are unrelated, but this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the
difference between the two is much more subtle, like moon (any natural
satellite) and Moon (our natural satellite, from which all others are
named), or sun (a star at the centre of a solar system) and Sun (our star).

 

9. Demonym

A demonym is a word referring to or describing an inhabitant of a place,
like New Zealander or Parisian. In English, most demonyms behave fairly
predictably and are formed using a suffix like –an (American), –ian
(Canadian), –er (New Yorker), or –ese (Japanese) added to a place name.
There are plenty of irregularities, though, like Neapolitan (Naples),
Glaswegian (Glasgow), Damascene (Damascus), Guamanian (Guam), and Monagasque
(Monaco).

 

10. Emordnilap

If a palindrome is a word or phrase that spells the same backwards as
forwards, then an emordnilap is a word that spells a completely different
word when it is reversed. So brag becomes grab, reward becomes drawer,
stressed becomes desserts, and so on. Emordnilap itself is an emordnilap of
course, but it’s also an ananym and an autological word.

 

11. and 12. Endonym and Exonym

An endonym is a word that the speakers of a language or the inhabitants of a
particular region use to refer to themselves, their hometown, or their
surroundings. The opposite is an exonym (or xenonym), which is an outside
equivalent or foreign translation of a local name. So London is an endonym
if you’re a Londoner, while the French name Londres would be an exonym.
Sometimes endonyms overtake exonyms and become the official name for a
location regardless of language, as is the case with Mumbai (formerly
Bombay), Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Myanmar (Burma), and Uluru (formerly
Ayer’s Rock).

 

13. and 14. Holonymy and Meronymy

In linguistics, the concepts of holonymy and meronymy refer to the
relationship between parts and wholes—the “whole” is the holonym, and the
“part” is the meronym. So a word like house is a holonym that encompasses a
group of meronyms like bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, doors, floors, and walls.
Body is a holonym for meronyms like arm, leg, head, stomach, foot, and so
on.

 

15. Holophrase

A holophrase is a single word used to sum up a full phrase or idea, like
bouncebackability, ungetatable, or unputdownable. It takes its name from a
linguistic phenomenon called holophrasis, whereby whole thoughts or sets of
ideas are communicated by a single word or (as with babies first learning to
speak) a single sound.

 

16. Homœosemant

According to a 1914 dictionary, a homœosemant is a word that has almost
similar meaning to another, but not quite. Also known as “semi-synonyms,”
homœosematic words basically account for the ever-so-slight differences in
meaning between sets of related words, like ask, question, probe, enquire,
interview, and interrogate.

 

17. Homophone

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and
often (but not always) different spellings, like dough and doe, or maze and
maize. Homophenes, however, are words that look the same as they are
pronounced, and so can prove problematic to lip-readers—try covering your
ears and getting someone to say the words Ben, men, and pen and you’ll soon
get the idea.

 

18. and 19. Hypernym and Hyponym

A hypernym is essentially an “umbrella” term, under which a number of more
specific words known as hyponyms can be listed. Unlike holonyms and
meronyms, which deal with parts of a whole, hypernyms work like categories
into which the subordinate hyponyms can be grouped. So animal is a hypernym
incorporating hyponyms like mammal, fish, and bird. In turn, mammal serves
as a hypernym for another set of hyponyms, like dog, cat, and mouse. And dog
is a hypernym for words like spaniel, collie, terrier, and so on.

 

20., 21., and 22. Oxytone, Paroxytone, and Proparoxytone

An oxytone is a word with stress on its final syllable, like guiTAR. A
paroxytone has its stress on the second to last syllable, like piANo. And a
proparoxytone emphasizes the syllable before that, like acCORdion.
Originally used in reference to Ancient Greek, terms like these are used in
English to account for the differences between homographic words like
CONduct as in “good conduct” (a paroxytone), and conDUCT as in “to conduct
an orchestra” (an oxytone).

 

23. Retronym

Coined by the journalist Frank Mankiewicz in the early 1980s, a retronym is
a word that comes into being whenever a newer word or invention surpasses an
older one, which then has to be renamed. So after electric guitars were
invented, earlier non-electric guitars came to be known by the retronym
acoustic guitars. The same thing happened with landline telephones, analog
clocks, field hockey, rugby union, silent films, 2D films, the French franc,
British English, and the First World War, which until the outbreak of the
Second World War was known simply as “The Great War.”

 

24. Tautonym

A tautonym is a word made up of two (or more) identical, repeated parts.
Normally this only applies to the scientific names of animals and plants,
like the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) or the western lowland mountain gorilla
(Gorilla gorilla gorilla), but it can also be used to describe words like
goody-goody, tutu, piripiri, bye-bye, and cha-cha-cha.

 

25. Troponym

A troponym is a word (more often than not a verb) that provides a more
detailed description of something than a more general word can. That might
sound like the definition of an adverb (like happily or slowly), but
troponyms are more like a cross between hyponyms and homœosemants in that
they are used to provide a slightly different, slightly more specific
account than a more general synonym might. As such, troponyms are hugely
important to creative writers, who want to provide as accurate and evocative
a description as possible. Take a simple sentence like “She walked into the
room,” for instance, and then substitute walk with strut, march, stumble,
creep, flounce, stagger or jump, and you’ll soon see how important they are.

 

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33% of the world's population can't do what with their fingers?

A:  Snap their fingers

 

Who said "I've never had an accident worth talking about" ?

A:  Captain E J Smith of the Titanic

 

The world's busiest MacDonald's was located in what city?

A:  Moscow

 

14% of Americans could not identify which country on a map?

A:  America

 

What was it that sank the German submarine U120 in WWII?

A: A broken toilet

 

Coprastastaphobia is the fear of what?

A:  Constipation