Friends Old and New

 

Friends Old and New

This month I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite books, relishing other writers’ mastery of words. One of my most-loved books is an anthology of short stories by H. H. Munro, who wrote under the pen name of “Saki.” Sadly, he was killed in World War I at the age of 45. Here are two examples of his inventive mind at work. Who knows how much more he might have brought us had he lived.

·         “The people of Crete make more history than they can consume locally.”

·         “‘Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death,’ said Clovis.”

Then there’s Never Rub Bottoms With A Porcupine, an anthology published by the English magazine, the New Statesman. It’s a compilation of responses to the publication’s literary-style competitions, to which readers respond with sometimes brilliant imagination. One competition (repeated occasionally) requests imagined proverbs of “a self-evident nature.” Three examples:

·         “Gloves make a poor present for a man with no hands.”

·         “A bald man does not fear gray hair.”

·         “A knowledge of Sanskrit is of little use to a man trapped in a sewer.”

But I’ve read new material too, including a book by Roy Peter Clark: The Glamour of Grammar. He provided a colorful reminder to keep a sentence’s subject and verb as close together as possible: “The creation of meaning… requires a subject and a verb, the king and queen of comprehensibility. And the king and queen are most powerful when they sit on adjacent thrones rather than in separate castles far away.”

Especially memorable for me, however, was his example of a Twitter message he encountered: “There’s a dead squirrel in the driveway. Mrs Liebowitz is worried that the death might be gang related. She’s checking FOX News to be sure.”

Ah, the joys of reading.

[300 words]

 

Are You Hangry?

 

“Are you hangry?”—The Conversation

You: “Funny how monosyllabic has five syllables, isn’t it?”

Me: “Yes, English is full of curiosities.”

You: “Such as?”

Me: “Take the letter A. If you start spelling out numbers (1, 2,  3...), you wouldn’t use the letter A until you reached a thousand.”

You: “Speaking of numbers, forty is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order.”

Me: “Regarding alphabetical order, English has a handful of words with each vowel, in order, once only. For example, abstemious and facetious.”

You: “How about this: can you think of any words beginning and ending in und?”

Me: “How about underground? Any others?”

You: “Yes: underfund. My turn: What are the only common words in English that end in -ngry?”

Me: “That’s easy: angry and hungry.”

You: “The Oxford English Dictionary now includes hangry, which combines angry and hungry to mean ‘bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger.’”

Me: “I’m left handed. So one of my favorite words is stewardesses.”

You: “Because?”

Me: “It’s the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.”

You: “I don’t know if there’s a right-handed equivalent. But I like uncopyrightable; it’s one of only a few words that have 15 letters, none of them repeated.”

Me: “Sort of the opposite of bookkeeping, which has three repeats in a row.”

You: “I like words containing other words. My favorite is therein, which gives you 13 words using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein. If you wonder about er, it’s okay. Merriam-Webster says it’s an interjection, usually indicating hesitation.”

Me: “Does anyone else care about all this?”

You: “Almost certainly not.”

Me: “Interesting word, almost. It’s the longest commonly used English word with all the letters in alphabetical order.”

You: “Oh.”

[300 words]