Category: Blog

This is a picture of about 400 of the 1000 words he is said to have invented. Click the link to go see them as links, and big enough to read.

Underneath the picture on the site is a link to a spreadsheet listing the data. Click it there if this link doesn’t work.

A dieresis is two dots above the second of a pair of vowels to show that you pronounce each vowel; it’s not a diphthong. Perhaps the most common example is in the word coöperative, or maybe naïve.

Here’s another, from the New Yorker, of course:

Last summer, a coalition of environmental groups around the country sent T.N.C. a letter asking it to reëvaluate support for promoting forestry as a “natural climate solution” and, in particular, to come out against burning trees to produce electricity—the so-called biomass energy that scientists now understand to be a major climate threat and that sociologists know to be a prime example of environmental racism.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/its-not-the-heat-its-the-humanity

Usually people use a hyphen because they don’t know how to make a dieresis. Hence, re-evaluate and co-operative. That’s okay.

here’s a picture of the ASCII codes for the dieresis:

Here’s the comic:

That kid knows grammar! Elision is when you leave something out that should really be there, usually.

• In the first panel he left off the subject, “I,” though the cartoonist doesn’t mention that elision.
• In the second panel, he could also have said “take it along,” but she has a point, I guess.
• In the last panel, I agree with her strongly. Should be “to be toasted.”

At least I’ve never heard the singular…

A commenter brought up the seme question for linguini, tortellini, and rotini.

Any Italians (or maybe chefs) out there who know the plurals of these?

They used to be statements, not questions.

Know Humpty Dumpty? It’s a riddle. Of course you see it in kids’ nursery rhyme books illustrated with an anthropomorphized egg, so the riddleness isn’t obvious. Here’s a better example of how riddles used to be:

Can you figure out who these legged things are and what’s going on?

Two more examples: You might know the story in the book of Judges about Samson killing a lion, and later finding a bees nest inside the carcass. To quote the riddle in context:

And Samson said unto them, I will now put forth a riddle unto you: if ye can certainly declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty sheets and thirty change of garments: But if ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me thirty sheets and thirty change of garments. And they said unto him, Put forth thy riddle, that we may hear it.

And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

And they could not in three days expound the riddle. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson’s wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: have ye called us to take that we have? is it not so? And Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, Behold, I have not told it my father nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee? And she wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted: and it came to pass on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon him: and she told the riddle to the children of her people. And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion? and he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.

Okay, this one is less serious. My dad liked to quote it to me when I was a kid:

As I looked over Castor’s wall,
I heard a man let out a squall
His beard was meat, his mouth was horn;
Such a man was never born.

Maybe I’ll tell the answer if someone asks.