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#34273 06/30/01 09:14 PM
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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?


#34274 07/01/01 12:09 AM
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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'.


#34275 07/01/01 08:46 AM
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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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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.


#34277 07/02/01 02:59 AM
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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
#34278 07/02/01 12:00 PM
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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.


#34279 07/02/01 02:09 PM
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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


#34280 07/02/01 02:13 PM
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infixes. In English I think they're mainly confined to swear words

This is a whole nother issue.


#34281 07/02/01 02:19 PM
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a whole nother
...and *that is definitely tmesis.


#34282 07/02/01 02:30 PM
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Tsuwm scores big again. Thanks for the link to the word "tmesis".


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