engastration
n. the act of stuffing one bird into another
Language
“Death and Life”
— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890
In a Word
curglaff
n. the shock felt on plunging into cold water
Charade
Amiable together.
Am I able to get her?
In a Word
cingulomania
n. a desire to hold another in one’s arms
Also:
basorexia
n. a craving to kiss
“Riddles for the Post Office”
The following ludicrous direction to a letter was copied verbatim from the original and interesting document:
too dad Tomas
hat the ole oke
otchut
I O Bary pade
Sur plees to let ole feather have this sefe.The letter found the gentleman at ‘The Old Oak Orchard, Tenbury.’ In another letter, the writer, after a severe struggle to express ‘Scotland,’ succeeded at length to his satisfaction, and wrote it thus: ‘stockling.’ A third letter was sent by a woman to a son who had settled in Tennessee, which the old lady had thus expressed with all phonetic simplicity, ’10 S C.’
— Robert Conger Pell, Milledulcia, 1857
Word-Unit Palindromes
These sentences read the same backward as forward:
- King, are you glad you are king?
- So patient a doctor to doctor a patient so.
- Dollars make men covetous, then covetous men make dollars.
- Husband by murdered wife lies cold, and cold lies wife, murdered by husband.
Our Mutual Friend
Anagrams on Dickens titles:
- THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY = DICKENS: NAIVE ENTER FANCIFUL DOTHEBOYS HALL
- OLD CURIOSITY SHOP = STORY O’ PIOUS CHILD
- OLIVER TWIST, BY CHARLES DICKENS = BOLD CREW SINS AT SLICK THIEVERY
- THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD = FOOD ENDETH MY WEIRD STORY
“We talk about the tyranny of words,” writes David Copperfield, “but we like to tyrannize over them too.”
Poser
What’s the difference between six dozen dozen and half a dozen dozen?
If you answered “nothing,” reconsider.
In a Word
vernalagnia
adj. heightened sexual desire in the springtime