xenodochial
adj. friendly to strangers

If a train remains at the station from two to two to two-two (from 1:58 to 2:02), a passenger who misses it must wait from two-two to two to two.

Tom, while playing a game of Scrabble against Dick, who, while considering the last word that Harry (who had had HAD) had had had had, had had HAD, had had HAD. Had HAD had more letters, he would have played it.

Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to insert a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign” have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips — and after Chips?

Every spring, the town of March in Cambridgeshire holds a “long, flat, pointless walk” across the Fens to Cambridge. “It has no purpose other than to be called the March March march.” There is an associated song, which is sometimes called the “March March March March.”

pharology
n. the study of lighthouses

allorgasmia
n. the need during sex to fantasize about a more desirable partner

murcous
adj. lacking a thumb

“Sir, between friends, I understand your overbearing disposition; a man even with the world is above contempt, whilst the ambitious are beneath ridicule.”

From Dick & Fitzgerald, The Book of 500 Curious Puzzles, 1859.

In his Remains Concerning Britain (1870), William Camden relates how a “scholar and a gentleman, living in a rude country town, where he had no respect, wrote this with a coal in the Town Hall:–Subi dura à rudibus.”

It means “endure rough treatment from uncultured brutes” — and it reads the same forward and backward.

decumbiture
n. the act of going to bed when sick