Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts

Monday, 5 November 2007

I preferred how you said it originally

Before the connection was made between the name of the humerus bone and the word humourous, the exposed nerve at the base of the elbow now called the funny bone was referred to as the crazy bone.

I urge everyone to revert back to calling it their crazy bone.

How do you say it?

If you use a contraction for the phrase "You are not," do you say "You aren't" or "You're not"?

I've seen both used, and technically they're both correct usage. But you aren't is just wrong.

Wednesday, 31 October 2007

Double letters, triple letters

There are plenty of words with double L, double T, double O... but are there any with double K? Or double H?

Yes.

Yes there are.

For double K you could have "bookkeeper." For double H you could have "hitchhiker."

But are there any words with triple letters?

Yes.

Yes there are.

But you must find them. Do I have to do everything around here?

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

Arranged in a quincunx

A quincunx is the arrangement of five objects in the pattern as found on dice (4 marking corners of a square, one placed centrally).

The only English word beginning with 'tm'

Tmesis. It means the insertion of a word inside another word, such as "In-flippin-credible".

A lot of you probably knew that, but I've been dreaming recently of telling Frank Butcher from Eastenders about this fact, and him reacting with great enthusiasm. So there. It's out of my head now and I can stop educating Frank Butcher.

Sunday, 28 October 2007

These are the news!

It's late, and this is a bit of trivia that everyone I know seems to think is obvious, but it only just hit me recently. So meeehhhhh to them.

The word "news" started out life in the 14th centurty as a pluarlised form of "new" - literally meaning "the new things". Strange how we now treat it as singluar.