afterwit
n. knowledge gained too late to do any good
Search Results for: in a word
In a Word
jentacular
adj. pertaining to breakfast
In a Word
hadeharia
n. constant use of the word “hell”
In a Word
wittol
n. a man who knows of and tolerates his wife’s infidelity
Words and Music
Wikimedia user Tarquin points out that the natural rhythm of spoken language can be used to teach polyrhythms.
Above: The phrase “cold cup of tea,” spoken naturally, approximates a rhythm of 2 against 3.
Below: The phrase “what atrocious weather” approximates 4 against 3.
In Other Words
Raymond Queneau’s 1947 book Exercises in Style tells the same story in 99 different ways, from telegram to ode:
Narrative:
“One day at about midday in the Parc Monceau district, on the back platform of a more or less full S bus (now No. 84), I observed a person with a very long neck who was wearing a felt hat which had a plaited cord round it instead of a ribbon. …”
Apostrophe:
“O platinum-nibbed stylograph, let thy smooth and rapid course trace on this single-side calendared paper those alphabetic glyphs which shall transmit to men of sparkling spectacles the narcissistic tale of a double encounter of omnibusilistic cause. …”
Sonnet:
“Glabrous was his dial and plaited was his bonnet,
And he, a puny colt — (how sad the neck he bore,
And long) — was now intent on his quotidian chore —
The bus arriving full, of somehow getting on it. …”
In response, Colin Crumplin’s 1977 book Hommage à Queneau features 100 different drawings of a cup, and Philip Ording’s 99 Variations on a Proof proves the same mathematical result in 99 different ways.
In Other Words
Writing in the New Beacon in 1938, blind poet W.H. Mansmore describes a process he calls “mental alchemy,” “a transmutation of sensations from one order to another.” He takes up this visual description from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, in which the nymph Asia watches dawn break over the mountains:
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains; through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it; now it wanes; it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air;
‘T is lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
The roseate sunlight quivers; …
“I give below an attempt to render the same passage in terms of touch:”
One cold metallic grain is quivering still
Deep in the flood of warm ethereal fluid
Beyond the velvet mountains: through a chasm
In banks of fleece the heavier lake is splashed
With fairy foam: it wanes: it grows again
As the waves thicken, and as the burning threads
Of woven wool unravel in the tepid air:
‘Tis lost! and through the unsubstantial snow
Of yonder peaks quivers the living form
And vigour of the Sun …
“Or it may be put into sound, thus:”
One star pierces with thin intensity
The large crescendo consonance of morn
Beyond the drumming mountains: on the lake
Through stolid silence ghostly-faint is thrown
An echo: now it wanes: it grows again
Its echo fades, and splits into a swarm
Of singing notes that scatter in the faint air:
Then through a sound of breathing winds afar
Begins the throbbing anthem of the Sun.
He adds, “I owe Shelley an apology for publishing the above travesties of his work, but with all their inadequacy they may serve to make clear our method of realising the unreal world of light in the real world of sound and touch.”
Words and Pictures
This just caught my eye: In his manuscripts and notebooks, Alexander Pushkin often sketched the characters he was describing, as well as friends, family, romantic partners, and other literary figures. One biographer calls the drawings Pushkin’s graphic diary. This page is from his 1822 poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus.
A Story Without Words
Subtitled “A Novel in Woodcuts,” Lynd Ward’s 1929 parable Gods’ Man unfolds in images, making it an important forebear of the modern graphic novel. A young artist makes his way to the big city, where a masked stranger gives him a magic paintbrush. The adventures that follow remark on the roles of love and commerce in an artist’s life; in the end the stranger returns to claim a reward.
Despite its unusual format, Ward’s book sold more than 20,000 copies during the Depression, and he followed it up with five more wordless novels. When he died in 1985, he was at work on an ambitious seventh, which Rutgers published in 2001.
Squaring Words
In his 1864 autobiography Passages From the Life of a Philosopher, Charles Babbage describes an “amusing puzzle.” The task is to write a given word in the first rank and file of a square and then fill the remaining blanks with letters so that the same four words appear in order both horizontally and vertically. He gives this example with the word DEAN:
D E A N E A S E A S K S N E S T
“The various ranks of the church are easily squared,” he writes, “but it is stated, I know not on what authority, that no one has yet succeeded in squaring the word bishop.”
By an unlikely coincidence I’ve just found that Eureka put this problem to its readers in 1961, and they found three solutions:
B I S H O P B I S H O P B I S H O P I L L U M E I N H E R E I M P A L E S L I D E S S H A R P S S P I N E T H U D D L E H E R M I T H A N G A R O M E L E T O R P I N E O L E A T E P E S E T A P E S T E R P E T R E L
The first was found by A.L. Cooil and J.M. Dagnese; the second by A.R.B. Thomas; and the third by R.W. Payne, J.D.E. Konhauser, and M. Rumney.
12/10/2023 UPDATE: Reader Giorgos Kalogeropoulos has enlisted a database of 235,000 words to produce more than 100 bishop squares (click to enlarge):
This is pleasing, because it’s a road that Babbage himself was trying to follow in the 19th century, laboriously cataloging the contents of physical dictionaries after an algorithm of his own devising — see page 238 in the book linked above. (Thanks, Giorgos.)