Newbie to the board.....long time wordaday follower.
Does anybody know what is.... the "study" of words within words....?
Hi, NBCreman
When you say "words within words", are you speaking of agglutination, specifically? If not, I would think etymology would suffice.
EDIT: Oh, now that I've read Mav's post, I see that I completely misunderstood the question. How embarrassing 
.
SECOND EDIT: Wow, what a neat site I just found, looking for your answer: http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~arlet/puzzles/language.html
charlinkadery looks promising.
Welcome. Could you give an example? (I'm thinking meta must be part of the word - I'm also thinking Anu used this as a weekly theme - tsuwm or an other [sic & ™] can look it up)
Welcome to the board, NBC - and the outlook over Wales is currently sunny!
I will be interested to see if tsuwm or some other wise owl digs up a special word for this. It's certainly a popular sport and a useful teaching tool - eg,
http://www.members.home.net/teachwell/index
No, I don't know. I just have to take this opportunity to invoke Garrison Keillor's clever demonstration that the word "usage" is contained within the word "sausage", and likewise is the word "turd" within "Saturday". Then he spun some tale about having sausage dinners on Saturdays of his youth, and how that always disturbed him, somehow...
mav, that 'simultaneous sausage' thang was *particularly scary. Don't ask me about Lemony Snicket. Please.
thanks, Fiberbabe
OK.
But only cause it's you
"Combinatorics" seems to be a likely suspect, but there appears to be a heavy mathematical emphasis on this form of study. There are several sites which discuss combinatorics specifically as it relates to the study of subwords.
With that, I'll give up and just wait for tsuwm to come to our rescue
Also, at the bottom of the main index there is a thread for "be heading words"
this was a theme--
Bleach
leach
each
ach
some members found words they could behead 5 or 6 times.. i think there is one string of seven!
Also, at the bottom of the main index there is a thread for "be heading words"
this was a theme-- e.i.,
Bleach
leach
each
ach
some members found words they could behead 5 or 6 times.. i think there is one string of seven!
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.
WOW... what a response... thanks all.
Words obviously connect sentences and people
there are other word games.. one that help with spelling (as your words within words does, i guess)
i learned to spell conscious.. because someone pointed out that the word had some science to it.. and after that, i never forgot the c--conscious in the middle.
FORESTALL: FOREST, ALL; FORE, REST, TALL (9)
Why not STALL ?
i learned to spell conscious.. because someone pointed out that the word had some science to it
But don't let your conscience get to you...
Welcome aBoard, NBC. Golly, from your screen name, I thought maybe you were in charge of staff fun at NBC!
But then I saw your bio--you and Rouspeteur share a career, as do WhitmanO'Neill and Flatlander (sort of), not to mention three-used-to-be-four attorneys, three docs, and a whole bunch of folk wot work with/on/in computers.
The word within word...
or.
Welcome aboard NBC! And thanks for the interesting thread!
share a career And, Jackie...never knew you were such a "bio scholar"! Double
"bio scholar"Zee grreat Know-all knows all, dahlink....kcab
elbuoD
i learned to spell conscious.. because someone pointed out that the word had some science to it
And separate has a rat in the middle.
Actually, I think most people who misspell
separate have a problem with the second syllable, and they write *
seperate instead. Or at least I've seen it spelled like that numbers of times. And the rat is still there!
You will remember "separate" if you remember not the rat in it, but a rat in it.
not the rat in it, but a rat in it.
Hey! C'mon you guys! That's what I said :
And separate has a rat in the middle
Perhaps I should have written : And separate has "a rat" in the middle ...
But after the discussion about over use of the quotation marks ... ?
but if you don't use quotation marks when 'appropriate', you might end up using
nearly unreadable fonts, or *unusual* characters, or
actually unreadable colors, or even [HORRORS] caps, just to add em
phasis. not to mention writing almost entirely in lower case just to de-emphasize your
ordinary musings.
not the rat in it, but a rat in it.
And Marianna made the same mistake I did so many years ago when I was told that there was a rat in separate.
And that's par for the course.
I, too, have a remarkable command of the obvious.
It's not the obvious, it's a obvious; ms anne obvious; wife of Ron Obvious and cousin to ee cummings.
Like the gal who wore sweaters for three good reasons. One, they kept her warm, and the other two were obvious.
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?
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'.
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!
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.
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
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.
re: absobloodylutely - some resources now assign the rhetorical figure tmesis to this kind of affix.
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/1999/05/26.html
…infixes. In English I think they're mainly confined to swear words …
This is a whole nother issue.
a whole nother
...and *that is definitely tmesis.
Tsuwm scores big again. Thanks for the link to the word "tmesis".
some resources now assign the rhetorical figure tmesis to this kind of affix.
But then we see from the Goldwyn quote* that, while tmesis may be necessary for infixing, infixing is not required for tmesis.
*"In two words, im possible." --Samuel Goldwyn
In reply to:
some resources now assign the rhetorical figure tmesis to this kind of affix
According to The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar it's the other way round. Tmesis is the older term and infix the more recent.
Bingley
Here's a link with some nice information about tmesis and related words
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/TMESIS.HTM
Good to know someone else is going through the same Quotation Mark Paranoia
"Pay" no "attention" to those "Nattering Nabobs of Negativism".
According to Dr. Bill's source (
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/TMESIS.HTM) tmesis is interjecting a word or phrase between parts of a compound word...
According to tsuwm's source (
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/1999/05/26.html) it's the act of splitting the word or words apart.
So which is it?
Don't make me use my OED
Then tsuwm's source seems a bit remiss. Why would you just split a word, and then leave it that way?
First you split, and then you insert. No ribaldry about it.
those Nattering Nabobs of Negativism
Thanks, Spiro T.!...the words of a true Vice President! Well, with that kind of support I will no longer worry about erasing the miles of Quotations from my tapes! """""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Why would you just split a word, and then leave it that way? First you split, and then you insert.
Ah, but they are two separate processes and the Goldwyn quote given in tsuwm's link does only the former.
Not to mention that the original Greek means an "act of cutting".
Or, that is, to quote our own ledasdottir and an early document cited by David Crystal in his Encyclopedia of the English Language a nother*, close quote, issue.
*Once again Ænigma sides with you, so I rest my case.
Tmesis orignally refered to splitting preverbs (look like prepositions) from verbs. Greek, Sanskrit, and German do this. The split isn't really interesting on its own, but provides a slot for other words to interpose themselves. Tmesis comes from the same root as atom 'indivisible' (literally 'uncut').
my god. Dr. Bill was only a
veteran...
thanks for the update, jheemster!
The split isn't really interesting on its own, but provides a slot for other words to interpose themselves.
Well, Mon Oncle, the concept sounds interesting. Can you give us an example, please?
the concept sounds interesting. Can you give us an example, please?
Sure. Here's a line from the Iliad xvi.670:
chrison t' ambrosiêi, peri d' ambrota heimata hesson
"anointed him with ambrosia and clothed him in immortal raiment"
peri ... hesson "put around, clothed" (periennumi 'to put round'). Sarpedon has just been killed and Apollo has taken him off the field for a funeral. The consensus seems to be that preverbs hadn't quite become as stuck to verbs in Homeric Greek as later. Though tmesis still happens in Classical Greek in Attic poetry and some plays for effect (as an archaism).
Bonus, here we get the word ambrosia and the adjective immortal (applied to clothes) in a single line. The verb hennumi 'to clothe' is related to Latin vestis 'garment, clothing' and Sanskrit vaste 'to clothe oneself'.
Dear jheem: could "divestrix" be equivalent of "ecdysiast"?
chrison t' ambrosiêi, peri d' ambrota heimata hesson
"anointed him with ambrosia and clothed him in immortal raiment"
Thank you for that. I am a little the wiser! It is useful to have an example, even for a non-{Greek reader}.
Thank you for that.
You're welcome, dxb.
One thing I was thinking about on the way to work yesterday morning was how tmesis in English, abso-bloody-lutely is not based on morphemic boundaries as it is in Greek (and other languages). Absolutely breaks down as follows: ab-solute-ly. Actually, you could argue that in English absolute is not composed of two morphemes but one.
That kind of expression had occurred to me too. But as you point out structure has no influence at all. It is just done however the speaker thinks best and is purely for emphasis. Don't think it counts really!
Don't think it counts really!
Do you mean that abso-effing-lutely isn't tmesis? Me, I think that some classicist was overjoyed when s/he was asked what the word-within-a-word thing was called, and said: "tmesis". Whatever it's called, it's something that happens and it's quite productive. And, yes, it has less to do with morphology than with prosody.