Fun With Words
In much more light-hearted fashion, today’s post is a collection of fun little word things. See how many you can get – the answers are after the “break”!
The Questions
1. What do the words banana, dresser, grammar, potato, revive, uneven and assess have in common?
2. What do the words incommunicado, disrupt, ungainly, misnomer and gormless have in common?
3. What’s so special about the words cleave, dust, left and rent?
4. What’s the most commonly-used word in the English language?
5. “Orange”. Is there another word in English that has no rhyme?
6. What’s so special about the word “uncopyrightable”?
7. Why is the word “Therein” so special?
8. What letter doesn’t appear in any of the names of the states of the United States?
9. What’s a “tmesis”?
10. What English word has the most definitions?
The Answers
1. If you take the first letter of each word and put it on the end, you spell the same word backwards.
2. They’re all negatives that have no positive form.
3. They’re all contronyms – they have two different, opposite meanings. Cleave: separate from or stick to; dust – sprinkle with fine powder or remove fine powder from; left – departed from somewhere or the bit that remains; rent – to buy the use of or to sell the use of.
4. “The”. It’s followed by “of”, then “and”.
5. Yes – “silver” also has no rhyme, though both have half-rhymes (“lozenge” and “salver”, respectively)
6. It’s one of the two longest English words containing no letter more than once. The other is “dermatoglyphics”.
7. It contains thirteen other words, all spelt by consecutive letters of the original: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein!
8. “Q”. James Bond would be most disappointed.
9. It’s when a word is inserted in the middle of two others of a common phrase, like “abso-frickin-lutely” or “Fan-smegging-tastic” (for the Red Dwarf fans out there).
10. “Set” – apparently, it has 464 of them in the OED!
So tell me – how many did you get? Pass it on to your friends and see how they compare!
I only got one right. That is a disappointing result. I think I might go and read my Shorter Oxford for the rest of the day.
I was extremely interested in doing the quiz, and in the answers, so that makes up for having a dunce result, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Please say I’m not a word dunce. Please?
One’s pretty good, actually. They’re all seriously obscure things and I actually got a couple of my own answers wrong until I double-checked them!
Orange – flange
Silver – quiver
Those were off the top of my head. Surely there are more. It’s the end silly bull that matters. So, salver would also be a rhyming word.