Wed 2 May 2007
Silly Riddle of the Day:
Think of words ending in -gry. ‘Angry’ and ‘hungry’ are two of them. What is the third word in the English language? You use it every day, and if you were reading carefully, I’ve just told you what it is.
(First one who posts the answer gets a gold star.)
MORE WORD FUN:
- Maybe you know that there are four words with no rhymes: silver, orange, purple and month. BUT silver and orange have HALF RHYMES! Lozenge with orange and salver with silver.
- “Bookkeeper”/”bookkeeping” are the only words with three consecutive repeated letters, unless you include hyphenated words, then you have “sweet-toothed” too.
- After primary, secondary, we have tertiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary and denary. Jumping to 12th we have duodenary and let’s not forget 20th, vigenary.
- Though the letter ‘e’ appears more often in words than any other, there are more words beginning with the letter ’s’.
- I’ve claimed that the longest one-syllable English word is screeched, at nine letters, but there are other 9 letter words with one-syllable as well: scratched, scrounged, scrunched, stretched, straights and strengths.
- Vacuum and continuum are two words that have two u’s in a row.
- “Ough” can be pronounced in at least nine different ways: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”
- ‘Skepticisms’ is supposed to be the longest word that is typed using alternate hands, try it and see!
- The abbreviation for pound, “lb.,” comes from the astrological sign Libra (symbolized by scales.)
Here are two more of my famous word fun and word trivia posts.
src: my brain, google, http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/contranym?view=uk, http://www.jayp.net/trivia/lang01.htm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 am
How about the first one to post that they’ve always hated the answer?
I’ll leave it at that without any more spoilers (except maybe to add there are some better versions of this when you’re able to give the riddle aloud — c’mon! you have an audioblog!)
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:42 am
Yeah, I agree, it is a silly riddle, and, in fact, it only really works when spoken (otherwise you’re violating English rules.)
May 10th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
And can you tell me what’s special about “stewardess” and “lollipop”?
May 10th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
yes I can, Nick. Those are words that are typed with just one hand (left and right respectively.)