The village of Hensbroek in North Holland takes its name from the personal name Hein and the Dutch cognate of brook, i.e., “Henry’s brook.”
Magnificently, the municipal coat of arms interprets it instead as “hen’s breeches” — and depicts a chicken wearing trousers.
These signs are posted on Cathedral Street in Woolloomooloo, New South Wales.
If you rearrange the letters in WHAT IS THE MEANING OR PURPOSE OF LIFE?, you get WINNIE-THE-POOH, SUFFER PIGLET’S AROMA.
(Discovered by John Henrick, Word Ways, May 1989.)
In a 1985 op-ed in the New York Times, writer Maggie Sullivan proposed some irregular verbs to match go, went, gone:
furlough, furlent, furlon: “All the soldiers were furlon except those the captain furlent last week.”
subdue, subdid, subdone: “Nothing else could have subdone him the way her violet eyes subdid him.”
frisbee, friswas, frisbeen: “Although he had never frisbeen before, after watching the tournament he friswas every day, trying to frisbee as the champions friswere.”
pay, pew, pain: “He had pain for not choosing a wife more carefully.”
conceal, console, consolen: “After the murder, Jake console the weapon.”
seesaw, sawsaw, seensaw: “While the children sawsaw, the old man thought of long ago when he had seensaw.”
fit, fat, fat: “The vest fat Joe, whereas the jacket would have fat a thinner man.”
ensnare, ensnore, ensnorn: “In the ’60s and ’70s, Sominex ads ensnore many who had never been ensnorn by ads before.”
displease, displose, displosen: “By the look on her face, I could tell she was displosen.”
Commemorate could emulate eat: “At the banquet to commemoreat Herbert Hoover, spirits were high, and by the end of the evening many other Republicans had been commemoreaten.”
(Maggie Sullivan, “You, Too, Can Strengthen English, and Write Good,” New York Times, May 4, 1985.)
calophantic
adj. pretending or making a show of excellence
velleity
n. a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it
fode
v. to lead on with delusive expectations
magnoperate
v. to magnify the greatness of
Roman diplomat Sidonius Apollinaris describes the hunting skill of Visigoth king Theodoric II:
If the chase is the order of the day, he joins it, but never carries his bow at his side, considering this derogatory to royal state. … He will ask you beforehand what you would like him to transfix; you choose, and he hits. If there is a miss … your vision will mostly be at fault, and not the archer’s skill.
(Quoted in Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, 2012.)
From a letter from English scholar Walter Raleigh to Mrs. F. Gotch, July 2, 1898:
Doe you lyke my newe phansy in the matere of Spelynge? I have growen wery of Spelynge wordes allwaies in one waye and now affecte diversite. The cheif vertew of my reform is that it makes the spelynge express the moode of the wryter. Frinsns, if yew fealin frenly, ye kin spel frenly-like. Butte if yew wyshe to indicate that thogh nott of hyghe bloode, yew are compleately atte one wyth the aristokrasy you canne double alle youre consonnantts, prollonge mosstte of yourre vowelles, and addde a fynalle ‘e’ wherevverre itte iss reququirred.
A later poem:
Wishes of an Elderly Man, Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914
I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!
In 1979 Auberon Waugh was working as a columnist at Private Eye when his editor offered him a trip to Senegal to help celebrate the anniversary of the magazine’s sister publication. “All I would have to give in exchange was a short discourse in the French language on the subject of breast feeding.”
The assignment struck Waugh as strange but not unaccountable — he’d been writing a regular column in a medical magazine that had touched on that topic.
“So I composed a speech on this subject in French, with considerable labour, only to find when I landed in Dakar that the subject chosen was not breast-feeding but press freedom.” He’d misheard the editor.
“There was no way even to describe the misunderstanding, since la liberté de la Presse bears no resemblance to le nourrisson naturel des bébés.”
(From Waugh’s 1991 autobiography Will This Do?)
pluvial
adj. relating to rainfall
A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain.
— Proust, Swann’s Way
