In a Word

http://elzo-meridianos.blogspot.com/2015/10/la-capsula-espacial-abandonada-en-mitad.html
Image: Meridianos

peisant
adj. having great weight

dissight
n. an unsightly object, an eyesore

bonification
n. the action of making something good or better

subrident
adj. accompanied by a smile

In 1959, a cement mixer rolled off a road in northeastern Oklahoma. The owners retrieved the truck, but the mixer held tons of concrete and was too heavy to move. Plans to bury it on the spot were eventually abandoned, and the disused mixer lay for decades beside Winganon Road. In 2008 Heather Thomas and her husband, Barry, decided to celebrate their fifth anniversary by finally attending to the matter — they disguised in as a space capsule.

(Thanks, Colin.)

| Language · Oddities

In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_Bille_-_Skibsvrag_med_en_overlevende_hund.png

thalassic
adj. of or relating to seas and oceans

dégringolade
n. a quick deterioration or breakdown, as of a situation or circumstance

supersalient
adj. leaping upon

sperate
adj. hoped for; not hopeless

Shipwreck With a Surviving Dog, by the Danish artist Carl Bille (1815–1898).

| Art · Language

Misc

  • “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.” — Swedish proverb
  • Uranus was discovered before Antarctica.
  • PROTECTORATE is a palindrome in Morse code.
  • PUBLIC RELATIONS is an anagram of CRAP BUILT ON LIES.
  • If you copy this sentence, be sure to omit “”.

(The fourth is due to Mick Tully, the fifth to David Armstrong.)

| Language · Oddities · Quotations · Trivia

Last Words

In 1899, six years before her death at age 70, Aboriginal Tasmanian Fanny Cochrane Smith made five wax cylinder recordings of traditional Aboriginal songs and language.

They are the only recorded example of Tasmanian Aboriginal songs and the only recorded example of any Tasmanian Aboriginal language.

Emily Keene, who was present at the recording, said that when the cylinder was played back for her, Smith cried, “My poor race. What have I done.”

“We could not pacify her for a long time,” Keene said. “She thought the voice she had heard was that of her mother.”

| History · Language

Obstacle Course

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odds_nipperkins.png

In Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos, a Christmas party game from 1824, players had to take turns reading tongue-twisting passages as quickly as possible from a prepared list. Each passage represents a letter of the alphabet, and each builds on its forerunners. The worst is this:

TOBY PHILPOT sat tippling with UMPO, VUMPO, and WILLY WIDEMOUTH of Wolverhampton, when X and Y, two officers, brought in the culprit, while Saccharum Sweet Tooth said nothing, while Ramo Samee really swollowed a sword, while Sly Kia cried Quack! quack! quack! And turned into a duck, to escape from Poniatowsky, who said, To jail with the Juggler and Jade, as Mother Bunch on her broomstick cried, here’s a to-do! as Nicholas Hotch-potch said, Never were such times, as Muley Hassan, Mufti of Moldavia, put on his Barnacles, to see little Tweedle gobble them up, when Kia Khan Kreuse transmogrofied them into Pippins, because Snip’s wife cried, Illikipilliky! lass a-day! ’tis too bad to titter at a body, when Hamet el Mammet, the bottlenosed Barber of Balasora, laughed ha! ha! ha! on beholding the elephant spout mud over the ‘Prentice, who pricked his trunk with a needle, as Dicky Snip, the tailor, read the proclamation of Chrononhotonthologos, offering a thousand sequins for taking Bombardinian, Bashaw of three tails, who killed Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos.

A player who couldn’t pronounce a passage perfectly had to pay a penalty for each mistake. Here’s the whole list.

| Language

Small Talk

“A Brief and Somewhat Ungracious Exchange Between the British Ambassador’s Wife, Who Speaks No Spanish, and the Spanish Ambassador’s Wife, Who Speaks No English, During a Courtesy Call by the Latter Upon the Former: Written on the Assumption That My Readers Know the Sound of the Spanish Word for ‘Yes'”

“T?”

“C.”

— Willard R. Espy

| Language · Poems

Letters and Numbers

ONE + TWO – THREE – FOUR + FIVE = 1

That’s true if we replace each word either with the number it denotes or with the quantity of its letters: Either way we’re left with 1. Another:

ONE + TWO – THREE – FOUR + FIVE – SIX + SEVEN + EIGHT + NINE – TEN + ELEVEN + TWELVE – THIRTEEN – FOURTEEN = 5

These are the only two such sequences using 20 or fewer consecutive number names, found Leonard Gordon, although other sequences of plus and minus signs are possible.

In a separate but related project, Gordon assigned the number names ONE through FIFTEEN, ONE through NINETEEN, and ONE through TWENTY to either side of an equals sign so that the denoted equation is mathematically correct and each equation “balances,” with the same number of letters on each side:

ONE + FOUR + SEVEN + TEN + ELEVEN + THIRTEEN + FOURTEEN = TWO + THREE + FIVE + SIX + EIGHT + NINE + TWELVE + FIFTEEN

ONE + THREE + FIVE + SEVEN + NINE + SIXTEEN + SEVENTEEN + EIGHTEEN + NINETEEN = TWO + FOUR + SIX + EIGHT + TEN + ELEVEN + TWELVE + THIRTEEN + FOURTEEN + FIFTEEN

ONE + THREE + SIX + NINE + TEN + TWELVE + THIRTEEN + FIFTEEN + SEVENTEEN + NINETEEN = TWO + FOUR + FIVE + SEVEN + EIGHT + ELEVEN + FOURTEEN + SIXTEEN + EIGHTEEN + TWENTY

(“Self-Referential Sums Revisited,” in “Kickshaws,” Word Ways 28:3 [August 1995], 170-180.)

| Language · Science & Math