S. Crabble's Word Games

This site was created to raise the bar on words and their usage. I, Noah S. Crabble, intend to adhere to that concept.



Welcome to S. Crabble's Word Games.

I will not be disingenuous and subjugate the readers or myself to the mundane and otherwise common word. To the contrary, I will deal with those words having curious qualities and characteristics that may be unfamiliar to most. The reader, heretofore known as a student shall be, dare I say, educated.

CONSTIPATED WORDS

Constipated words, that is to say words without normal vowel movement, are those words that do not contain the standard vowels: a,e,i,o and u. There are a number of words in the English language that incorporate the letter y to serve as a vowel. Some of these words are either archaic or rarely used, but can be found in some dictionaries.

Longest English words not containing vowels:

twyndyllyngs -(12 letters) is a 15th century English spelling of twinlings, which means in modern English, twins.
~~~Other words containing none of the standard vowels include: twyndyllyng - (11 letters); symphysy - (8); gypsyfy, gypsyry, nymphly and rhythms - (7); and then there is a certain wasp, zyzzyx and an alignment of planets, syzygy both with (6) letters.
~~~The shortest one syllable word (8 letters)in the English language with 6 consecutive consonants is borschts. The longest one syllable word in the English language,strengths, contains 8 consonants.
~~~The "Holy Grail" of words for a Scrabble player is zyzzyva, a three-syllable word with 6 consecutive consonants, which is a type of weevil.

DIARRHEIC WORDS

Diarrheic words are the opposite of constipated words, in that you might say they have the runs when it comes to vowel movement. These words have few or no consonants, but more than make up for that deficiency with their displays of vowels.

Defined as the cadence in midieval music, euouae is only found in dictionaries which feature archaic or obsolete words. This word has the distinction of being both the longest word containing only vowels, but also the word containing the most consecutive vowels (6). Two common words contain 5 consecutive vowels: cooeeing and queueing.
~~~facetious with 9 letters, is the shortest common English word in which all of the vowels appear in alphabetical order. Changing the word into an adverb by adding the suffix "ly," forms an 11-letter word in which the "y" is used as a vowel; thus the complete alphabetical sequence "a-e-i-o-u-y." abstemiously, with 12 letters is the longest such word. adventitiously and sacrilegiously each have 14 letters, but the letter "i" is repeated.

SEEING DOUBLE

Let us now take a little time out for a short quiz. Can you think of at least one common word containing the following double vowels:

1) - "aa"__________
2) - "ee"__________
3) - "ii" __________
4) - "oo"__________
5) - "uu"__________

(Proper names are not allowed. My answers will appear in the comments section of this post.)
While the word bookkeeper has three consecutive sets of double letters, the lesser known subbookkeeper does it one better with four.

ALPHA_OMEGA

A common word, crabcake, and less common words such as abcaree, abchalaz, abcoulomb, and drabcloth are the only words to contain the letter sequence "abc."
~~~hydroxyzine is only word containing "xyz."

That brings us to the last lesson of the day!

SWITCH HITTERS

conservationalists and conversationalists with 18 letters are the longest non-scientific English words that are anagrams of each other.
~~~Earth (heart) and Mars (rams) are the only planets to have anagrams.
~~~Monday (dynamo) is the only day of the week with an anagram.
~~~The only months with anagrams are: March (charm), April (ripal) and May (yam).

Okay, class is dismissed. Be sure to study.

NO.65

English, Schmenglish!

Prof. S. Crabble here. I'm back again. This time I wish to show that you don't know your English as well as you would like to think. This piece is not intended so much as to embarrass you, but to demoralize you. It is a test of not only your vocabulary, but of your pronunciation skills also. (The following was found Here!)

Coffee break time? Print this off and test your work mates, see who can read it correctly all the way through...

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore*,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen*, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene*, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.*
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer* does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats* and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,*
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

* Some tips: -
'terpsichore' is pronounced terpsickery,
'lichen' is pronounced liken,
'melpomene' is pronounced melpominy,
'Feoffer 'is pronounced feffer,
'victual' is pronounced vittle,
'gunwale' is pronounced gunnell,
'groats' is pronounced grits."

Didn't do so good? There you have it, that's why I can call myself a lexiconographer and you cannot. Fear not, fledglings, give yourself a pat on the back if managed to read all the way through the lesson despite your mistakes. You have passed the course.

No.41

Righting It Write

Professor Noah S. Crabble here.

It has come to my attention that an inordinate number of Bloggers fancy themselves, ahem, as writers. My advice is that you stick to the more appropriate epithet of 'bloggers.' Let those who read your grandiose literary attempts decide whether or not you are a writer.

I suggest you read the accounts of one such 'writer' in the correspondence sent to a publisher and chronicled in a series of articles titled "Dear Twit." These can be found at the site of one of my associates here at Verbicidal Tendencies, Serena Joy.
In the meantime, I suggest that these so-called writers study the following helpful hints to perfect their writing skills.

Rules for Better Writing

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)

6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.

7. Be more or less specific.

8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually)unnecessary.

9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

10. No sentence fragments.

11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.

12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

14. One should NEVER generalize.

15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

16. Don't use no double negatives.

17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

20. The passive voice is to be ignored.

21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.

22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.

23. Kill all exclamation points!!!

24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earthshaking ideas.

26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.

27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.

29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.

30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

32. Who needs rhetorical questions?

33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

No.24