Webster\u27s Fourth: A Review

1909, 1934, 1961 ... from this series, one might predict that the fourth edition of the Merriam-Webster Unabridged will appear in 1990. Alas, this is no Halley\u27s comet. According to the August 1985 issue of Games magazine, The Merriam-Webster editorial director flatly state there are no plans for such a work , and a noted lexicographer and editor doubts that there ever will be: uneconomical...an unabridged simply doesn\u27t sell enough copies . This article and the following one present two wistful (or, perhaps, wishful?) views of this unlikely work

A Maximum Mono- and Di-Syllabary

This is an attempt to list the longest English-language words of one or two syllables, beginning with each letter of the alphabet, according to listings and pronunciations in Webster\u27s Second or Third editions. The -ED ending is permitted for verbs, and the -S ending for nouns, even when permission to pluralize is not explicitly given in Webster. However, hyphenated words have been excluded

Five-Letter Word Patterns

Excluding patterns with three or more consecutive identical letters, there are 41 different word patterns for five-letter words

Jejuniana

When Galen in the second century carried out autopsies, he found that the second portion of the small intestine was usually empty, and called this part of the gut the jejunum, meaning empty, dry. We have a few English words with the same root

A Ziticorumbatous 15-Square

Considering the enormous difficulties encountered in the construction of large word squares, it is not surprising that the first 15-square ever found should require unusual words from obscure sources. However, success was assured with the aid of the fearsome Zong computer, and the square, with all words carefully defined, is given below

Concrete Considerations

On reading that a number of priests had gathered for a CONCELEBRATION of the Mass, it seemed that a formula had presented itself for the generation of collective verbs which might be used in the manner of the spate of collective nouns with which we have become familiar. James Lipton\u27s An Exaltation of Larks (Grossman Publishers, 1968; paperback edition Penguin Books, 1977) sets forth large numbers of legitimate collective nouns and adds many new coinages, from a colony of bacteriologists to a cc of Mexicans

Emesis Nemesis: Naming Butterflies

Emesis nemesis: a pretty word symmetry, suggesting the name of a nostrum to prevent vomiting. It is, instead, the Latin name of a little Texas butterfly. H.L. Lewis\u27s Butterflies of the World boasts color photographs of more than 5,000 of the lovely creatures. Most of the book does consist of these color plates, and at the bottom of each page are the scientific (genus and species) names. The Latin words encountered form a fitting counterpoint to the fascination of the photographs. If a living being happens to belong to a notorious genus, that name appears as a bold entry in the Webster dictionaries. Butterflies do not fare very well in this regard, but their genus names ought to be as deserving as those of mammals or plants used for human food

The Cystine Chapel

According to Webster\u27s Third New International Dictionary, the words SISTINE, CYSTINE and CYSTEINE are pronounced in the same way -- a homonymic fact which overtaxes my imagination. The latter two are sulfur-containing amino acids, and ambiguity in spoken English is so real that the preferred dictionary pronunciations are seldom used: CYSTEINE most often becomes a three-syllable word, /sis tay een/, accented on the second syllable so the hearer knows with certainty what the speaker means. In the same fashion, HOMOCYSTEINE and HOMOCYSTINE are in practice pronounced differently, although dictionary preference is for homonymy, rhyming with SISTINE. Note also BENZENE and BENZINE, where a chemist may speak of benzine-with-an-I or benzene-with-an-E

Shakespearean Word (514) Ways (82)

In 1969, The Bard met The Computer, resulting in The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare by marvin Spevack, a 1600-page book with very large pages and very small type, cataloguing the 884,647 words of Will\u27s written corpus, from A to ZWAGGER\u27D. Excepting the 43 most frequently used words (THE, AND, I, etc.), every single use of every single word is listed, with the line or context in which it appears. The number of times each word is used is also tabulated. I do not doubt this revolutionized the study of Shakespeare, but I am not aware of a logological appreciation

Kickshaws

A collection of linguistic kickshaws