Scholars have long puzzled over a line in Hamlet describing the Dane as "fat and short of breath."
The mystery was solved by a Shakespearean scholar who stopped for a drink of water in a remote area of southern England where something akin to Elizabethan English is still spoken. A farm woman said: "You are fat," meaning: "You are perspiring." "Aha!" said the scholar (who was far from fat): "that's what Shakespeare meant, and that's why the Queen said, 'Take my napkin, rub thy brows.' Hamlet was sweating!"New to me, so I got out my compact OED and the magnifying glass and searched through several pages to find "Of wood: resinous," [thus fatwood] "Of clay: having a greasy feeling," "Of air: charged with moisture." I did not find fat = sweaty/perspiring. This interpretation (and the general question of whether Hamlet could have been obese) is discussed at length in a Slate article.
The book lists twelve words that are pronounced with three syllables, but have only four letters. Some are obscure, but I've listed nine of the familiar ones in the first "comment" on this post. Graduates of Miami University or Coe College will recognize a couple of them.
Conversely, these are the longest one-syllable words: scratched, screeched, scrounged, squelched, strengths, and stretched.
What is the longest common word that can be made with the letters in the top row of a typewriter [qwertyuiop]? Answer: typewriter.
Two words with six consecutive consonants: latchstrings and catchphrase.
For those interested in pursuing such matters, the book I found these in is An Almanac of Words at Play, by Willard R. Espy (Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1975).
One addendum from my own memory: SEQUOIA is the shortest word to include all five vowels.
Ohio and Iowa were hinted at. Others include Aida, area, aria, idea, iota, olio, and urea.
ReplyDeleteInteresting (?necessary) that they all begin with vowels.
I've always been a fan of the triple-double: Bookkeeper
ReplyDeleteI can see whyyy.
DeleteI had it and loved it, and the second book, /Another Almanac of Words At Play/, currently $1.66, but not for long, probably, now that you've put Willard R. Espy back on the map:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Another-Almanac-Words-at-Play/dp/0517531887
Then there's the word "queue," which has four vowels it doesn't need.
ReplyDelete:-)
Deleteplus abstemiously, abstentiously, and two others I've forgotten
ReplyDeleteIf world has one syllable, some might consider squirreled to be a rhyming word with 10 letters and one syllable
ReplyDeleteyou should send some of those in to the 'sunday puzzle' on npr!
ReplyDeleteI-)
The longest common word that can be typed with the left hand (in standard position) is "stewardesses."
ReplyDelete