Curtesy of this week's (07/29/07) New York Times Magazine in an Arcticle by Erin McKeon, Corpus, I have discovered a new Word page. It is at AskOxford.com and is a delightful page of links to all kinds of answers to English Language Word Questions such as:
What comes after once, twice, thrice?
The answer, it turns out, is 'Nothing'.
There are many more such tidbits.
Erin McKeon's article on the Oxford English Corpus and its uses is also well worth reading.
Erin is the Editor of Verbatim® Magazine.
Don
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Quodlibet
quod·li·bet \Quod"li*bet\ (kw[o^]d"l[i^]*b[e^]t), n. [L., what you please.] 1. A nice point; a subtilty; a debatable point.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Also quodlibertarian and quodlibetic - purely academic!
English Spelling? Does English really work this way?
* Pronounce "ghoti".
* Pronounce "Phtholognyrrh".
* Spell "coffee" completely wrong.
Go to the bottom of the page for answers!
* Pronounce "Phtholognyrrh".
* Spell "coffee" completely wrong.
Go to the bottom of the page for answers!
Monday, July 30, 2007
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Answers:
- ghoti is pronounced: fish, 'gh' as in tough, 'o' as in women and 'ti' as in motion! Attributed to George Bernard Shaw by some. Visit GHOTI for a rant against this "joke" about english pronuciation.
- Phtholognyrrh pronounced: Turner, According to a Mr. Turner who insisted on signing his name that way according to Robert M. Rennick in I Didn't Catch Your Name, Verbatim® Vol. XXix, No2. Mr Turner explains: " Look, the phth is like phthisic, which is pronounced t; olo is like colonel, which is pronounced ur; gn as in gnat is pronounced n; and yrrh as in myrrh, is pronounced er. So you have Turner. Nothing could be simpler." Reader's Digest, Jan . 1941, p. 42
- coffee spelled completely incorrectly is kauphy! or kaughy!
A.Word.A.Day
