A capitonym is a word that changes meaning when it’s capitalized:
A herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.
Language
Isograms
An isogram is a word in which no letter is repeated:
- METALWORKINGS
- LEXICOGRAPHY
- MALNOURISHED
- THUNDERCLAPS
- UNFORGIVABLE
- AMBIDEXTROUSLY
- UNCOPYRIGHTABLE
Theoretically the limit is 26 letters, but that’s an Everest that no one has scaled. Dmitri Borgmann has conquered some lesser peaks with THUMBSCREW-JAPINGLY (18 letters, “as if mocking a thumbscrew”) and PUBVEXINGFJORD-SCHMALTZY (23 letters, “as if in the manner of the extreme sentimentalism generated in some individuals by the sight of a majestic fjord, which sentimentalism is annoying to the clientele of an English inn”). Maybe what we lack is imagination.
Rechtub Klat
It’s not only 007 who communicates in code. Butchers in Australia speak a secret language called Rechtub Klat (“butcher talk”), in which words are pronounced backward.
Why should butchers need a secret language? So they can talk about the customers:
- Kool, toh lrig = Look, hot girl
- Doog tsub = Good bust
- Doog esra = Good arse
- On doog cuf ecaf = No-good fuckface
Keep your ears open.
Scrabble Heaven
The most frequently used letters of the English alphabet, in order, are ETAOIN SHRDLU.
They can be rearranged to spell SOUTH IRELAND.
In a Word
griffade
sudden seizure with the claws
Robble Robble Robble
In Brazil, the Hamburglar is known as Papaburguer.
In a Word
whiskerine
n. beard-growing contest
Mindsight Fablelore
Here’s what English might look like if the Norman Conquest had failed:
To be, or not to be: that is the ask-thing:
is’t higher-thinking in the brain to bear
the slings and arrows of outrageous dooming
or to take weapons ‘gainst a sea of bothers
and by againstwork end them?
Author Paul Jennings composed this excerpt in 1966, 900 years after 1066. It uses words with Germanic roots in place of those with Greek, Latin, and Romance ones, which came to England with William the Conqueror. Jennings calls it “Anglish.”
In a Word
quisby
n. an idler
“Does a One-Legged Duck Swim in Circles?”
Recent winners of the Foot in Mouth Award, presented each year by the British Plain English Campaign for “a baffling quote by a public figure”:
- 2005: Welsh politician Rhodri Morgan on the police: “The only thing which isn’t up for grabs is no change, and I think it’s fair to say it’s all to play for, except for no change.”
- 2004: M.P. Boris Johnson on the television program Have I Got News For You: “I could not fail to disagree with you less.”
- 2003: U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a news conference: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns–the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
- 2002: Actor Richard Gere: “I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe and somebody said I was a snake, I’d think, ‘No, actually I am a giraffe.'”
- 2001: English artist Tracey Emin: “When it comes to words, I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in terms of art–and it’s my words that actually make my art quite unique.”
- 2000: Alicia Silverstone, quoted in the Sunday Telegraph: “I think that [the film] Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it’s true lightness.”