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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 4,189
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 4,189 |
But after the discussion about over use of the quotation marks...?Good to know someone else is going through the same Quotation Mark Paranoia that I'm experiencing right now! Notice all the bold showing up in my posts lately?  
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Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 41
newbie
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newbie
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 41 |
In reply to:
longest charlinkade FORESTALL: FOREST, ALL; FORE, REST, TALL (9)
notice the "link" part of charlinkade. the words listed in the two groups *link the characters of forestall. the word ore is also contained therein, but doesn't work.
In the word 'therein' there nests a veritable forest of linguistic creatures. And 'therein' itself nests in 'thereinbefore', an even more fertile progenitor of nested words.
As for agglutinative or pyramid or curtailed words, the longest string I've seen started with about 13 letters, but my favourite (only because I thought it up myself), at 11, is:
austringers
astringers
stringers
stringer
stinger
stinge
singe
sing
sin
in
I
An austringer, as I'm sure you all know, is a variant spelling (in OED) of the word for 'a keeper of goshawks'.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 427 |
You will remember "separate" if you remember not the rat in it, but a rat in it.My mistake, wow and sparteye  It's pretty clear to me now what you meant!
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,439 |
not, dear Marianna, it's the lack of vocal intonation in the written word that causes difficulties now and then ... happens to all of us. Here's another I had trouble with early on in spelling lessons : remember that cemetery is all "E"s - as in EEEEEE! A cemetery! And Sheriff was a problem until someone said : "The Sheriff is a Really Fine Fellow!" -- Sheriff : one R, two Fs.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,065 |
In reply to:
the "study" of words within words
Then there's infixes. In English I think they're mainly confined to swear words (absobloodylutely)but I believe there are languages where they're used just as much as we use prefixes and suffixes.
Bingley
Bingley
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Bingley: thanks for the word "infix". I don't remember seeing it before, and it could be handy.My dictionary gives the word "gemology" with the "o" as an infix.
P.S. All of the words ending in "ology" then are examples of use of "o" as an infix.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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…infixes. In English I think they're mainly confined to swear words …
This is a whole nother issue.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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a whole nother
...and *that is definitely tmesis.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Tsuwm scores big again. Thanks for the link to the word "tmesis".
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