It’s said that police sergeants in Leith, Scotland, used this tongue twister as a sobriety test:
The Leith police dismisseth us,
I’m thankful, sir, to say;
The Leith police dismisseth us,
They thought we sought to stay.
The Leith police dismisseth us,
We both sighed sighs apiece;
And the sigh that we sighed as we said goodbye
Was the size of the Leith police.
If you can’t say it, you’re drunk.
picqueter
n. one who arranges artificial flowers for a living
Arnold Bennett was surprised to find no fresh flowers in George Bernard Shaw’s apartment.
“But I thought you were so fond of flowers,” he said.
“I am,” Shaw replied, “and I’m very fond of children too, but I don’t chop their heads off and stand them in pots about the house.”
Medieval sportsmen invented collective nouns for everything from owls to otters. Less well known are the terms they invented for people — this list is taken from Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801:
clinomania
n. an excessive desire to stay in bed
“The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.” — Samuel Johnson
hallelujatic
adj. containing hallelujahs
There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Who always at dinner sat dolmondeley.
His fair partner said,
As he crumbled his bread,
“Dear me! You behave very rolmondeley!”
Said a man to his spouse in east Sydenham:
“My best trousers! Now where have you hydenham?
It is perfectly true
They were not very new,
But I foolishly left half a quydenham.”
A young Englishwoman named St John
Met a red-skinned American It John
Who made her his bride
And gave her, beside,
A dress with a gaudy bead Frt John.
There was a young vicar from Salisbury
Whose manners were quite halisbury-scalisbury.
He went around Hampshire
Without any pampshire
Till his bishop compelled him to walisbury.
(Thanks, Gavin.)
After François Ravillac assassinated Henry IV of France in 1610, it was discovered that
HENRICUS IV GALLIARUM REX (“Henry IV, King of the Gauls”)
can be rearranged to spell
IN HERUM EXURGIS RAVILLAC (“From these Ravillac rises up”)
His predecessor, Henry III, was also assassinated–his killer’s name, Frère Jacques Clement, can be anagrammed to spell C’est l’enfer qui m’a créé — “hell created me.”
‘Mind your stops’ is a good rule in writing as well as in riding. So in public speaking, it is a great thing to know when to stop and where to stop. The third edition of a treatise on English Punctuation has been recently published, with all needful rules for writers, but none for speakers. The author furnishes the following example of the unintelligible, produced by the want of pauses in the right places:
Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails upon each hand;
Five and twenty on hands and feet.
And this is true, without deceit.If the present points be removed, and others inserted, the true meaning of the passage will at once appear:
Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails: upon each hand
Five; and twenty on hands and feet.
And this is true without deceit.
– Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1855
“Too hot to hoot!”
“Too hot to woo!”
“Too wot?”
“Too hot to hoot!”
“To woo!”
“Too wot?”
“To hoot! Too hot to hoot!”
– George Marvill, New Statesman weekend competition, May 5, 1967