Philosophy
So, this morning driving into school, the older of the short people asks me if there is a name for the class of words that spell a different word backwards. Palindromes are the special case where it is the same word in either direction, but what of the more general case where you get two different words? Is there a name for that?
She came up with a number of three and four letter examples -- saw/was, tool/loot, stop/pots. I mentioned the classic eight letter instance desserts/stressed. Others that you can think of? What is the longest?
- The Necessity Of Curse Words
The shorter of the short people has become fascinated with curse words. The idea that there are culturally forbidden sounds makes these sounds interesting. As a reuslt, he's invented his own, nork (the sound made by the Siamese elephants in Tim Conway's...
- Alternating Vowels And Consonants
Driving in this morning, the shorter of the short people got very excited that the word "cemetery" alternated consonants and vowels. We tried to think of more and longer words that followed the pattern. The longest ones we could come up with were "originality"...
- Team Building: Boggleball
Let's try this again. It's based on those obnoxious corporate team-building exercises where folks have to work together on a task. Last night after dinner, TheWife and the short people and I took the word "basketball" and found 101 words that...
- Silent Letters
The English language is an odd mishmash of German, Dutch, Norse, French, Celtic, and Latin. So many pieces that don't fit together so well have resulted in a language that is really odd. Consider how many words in English have utterly irrelevant letter...
- Doing Things With The N-word
Should we stop using the N-word? And when I say ?we,? I mean all of my readers and possible readers (both black and non-black). Should we stop using the N-word? I?m not going to answer this question here, but suggest a better strategy for answering it....
Philosophy
Bidirectional Words
So, this morning driving into school, the older of the short people asks me if there is a name for the class of words that spell a different word backwards. Palindromes are the special case where it is the same word in either direction, but what of the more general case where you get two different words? Is there a name for that?
She came up with a number of three and four letter examples -- saw/was, tool/loot, stop/pots. I mentioned the classic eight letter instance desserts/stressed. Others that you can think of? What is the longest?
- The Necessity Of Curse Words
The shorter of the short people has become fascinated with curse words. The idea that there are culturally forbidden sounds makes these sounds interesting. As a reuslt, he's invented his own, nork (the sound made by the Siamese elephants in Tim Conway's...
- Alternating Vowels And Consonants
Driving in this morning, the shorter of the short people got very excited that the word "cemetery" alternated consonants and vowels. We tried to think of more and longer words that followed the pattern. The longest ones we could come up with were "originality"...
- Team Building: Boggleball
Let's try this again. It's based on those obnoxious corporate team-building exercises where folks have to work together on a task. Last night after dinner, TheWife and the short people and I took the word "basketball" and found 101 words that...
- Silent Letters
The English language is an odd mishmash of German, Dutch, Norse, French, Celtic, and Latin. So many pieces that don't fit together so well have resulted in a language that is really odd. Consider how many words in English have utterly irrelevant letter...
- Doing Things With The N-word
Should we stop using the N-word? And when I say ?we,? I mean all of my readers and possible readers (both black and non-black). Should we stop using the N-word? I?m not going to answer this question here, but suggest a better strategy for answering it....