Laid up in the hospital, James Thurber passed the time doing crossword puzzles.
One day he asked a nurse, “What seven-letter word has three u’s in it?”
She said, “I don’t know, but it must be unusual.”
Language
In a Word
qualtagh
n. the first person one meets after leaving the house
Overkill
Poet/farmer Thomas Tusser composed his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573) for the most part in rhyming couplets. But in Chapter 49 he gets ambitious, casting his conclusion in 94 consecutive words that begin with the letter T:
The thrifty that teacheth the thriving to thrive,
Teach timely to traverse, the thing that thou ‘trive,
Transferring thy toiling, to timeliness taught,
This teacheth thee temp’rance to temper thy thought.
Take Trusty (to trust to) that thinkest to thee,
That trustily thriftiness trowleth to thee.
Then temper thy travell, to tarry the tide,
This teacheth thee thriftiness, twenty times try’d.
Take thankfull thy talent, thank thankfully those,
That thriftily teacheth thy time to transpose.
Troth twice to be teached, teach twenty times ten,
This trade thou that takest, take thrift to thee then.
“Perhaps this was the most difficult chapter, according to its length, that our author had to compose,” writes editor William Mavor, “yet he has strained alliteration to the most extravagant pitch; for when he writes trive for contrive, and for the sake of the rhyme uses thee for thrive, we cannot help pitying the miserable expedients to which he was reduced, in order to accomplish his design.”
“In other respects the advice is good.”
In a Word
acnestis
n. that part of an animal’s skin that it cannot reach to scratch
“Literary Ingenuity”
ODO TENET MULUM, MADIDAM MAPPAM TENET ANNA
[Odo, holding Master Doctor’s mule, and Anne with her tablecloth]
The above line is said, in an old book, to have ‘cost the inventor much foolish labor, for it is perfect verse, and every word is the very same both backward and forward.’
— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882
All Greek
Readers of Punch were perplexed to find a classical verse in its pages:
It’s faux Greek; the author had simply replaced Latin letters with Greek ones:
To the Leading Periodical
This compliment, great sir, o take,
You’re a brick and no mistake.
Enemy to cant and fudge,
Time to thee I ne’er begrudge.
And I hope to see your name
Foremost in the lists of fame.
— Tom Smith, Grub Street
In a Word
antithalian
adj. opposed to fun
Unquote
“Quit. That’s what reporter Milt Sosin did today.”
— Resignation notice discovered on a Miami News bulletin board after an editor insisted that beat reporters use “short and punchy paragraphs”
What’s in a Name
The disciples of Descartes made a perfect anagram upon the Latinised name of their master, ‘Renatus Cartesius,’ one which not only takes up every letter, but which also expresses their opinion of that master’s speciality–‘Tu scis res naturae’ (Thou knowest the things of nature).
— William T. Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882
“Prevalent Poetry”
A wandering tribe, called the Siouxs,
Wear moccasins, having no shiouxs.
They are made of buckskin,
With the fleshy side in,
Embroidered with beads of bright hyiouxs.
When out on the war-path, the Siouxs
March single file–never by tiouxs–
And by “blazing” the trees
Can return at their ease,
And their way through the forests ne’er liouxs.
All new-fashioned boats he eschiouxs,
And uses the birch-bark caniouxs;
These are handy and light,
And, inverted at night,
Give shelter from storms and from dyiouxs.
The principal food of the Siouxs
Is Indian maize, which they briouxs,
And hominy make,
Or mix in a cake,
And eat it with pork, as they chiouxs.
Now, doesn’t this spelling look cyiouxrious?
‘Tis enough to make any one fyiouxrious!
So a word to the wise!
Pray our language revise
With orthography not so injiouxrious.
— Charles Follen Adams