QUEER WORDS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 817, 14 May 1910, Page 15

QUEER WORDS.

THE CURIOSITIES OF ENGLISH. ;It in perhaps only natural, writes Mr. 'Harold M. Haskell, that a language nvade up of so many heterogeneous elements aa our own should abound in curiosities not to be found in a language whose development was littlo influenced by outside sources, or in a scientifically constructed tongue like Esperanto or Volapuk. Certain it is that a knowledge of these curiosities brings with it something of fascination and serves to endeaT to us our curious old language. Noticeable is the fact that words which rhyme perfectly may have altogether different terminations, as the words "gneiss" and "mice," and that words which terminate similarly not infrequently fail to rhyme, as in tho case of "brides" and "cantliarules." In "suspicion," "remission, and contrition" we have tlirco words in wnion tho final "ion" is preceded in each ease hv a different consonant; but, as the 1 and C both take the sound of b, these words all rhyme perfectly. . Further investigation reveals the interesting fact that, whereas there, is a great variety of words ending in "tion and sion, M only five boar tho termination These five are "scion," "coercion, sus; nicion," "opiuicion," and "intcrnewon. "Epinicion," meaning a.song of victory, and : "internecion," meaning slaughter, aro not in common use; but the other three words are familiar to all. It is ..perhaps worthv of remark that of words, bearing the phonetically similar ending "tion" there are over ono hundred examples. „, „ . . _ Tho termination "dons" is, however, oven more exclusive than "cm", as it is borne bv just four English words. These are "stupendous," tremendous,, "hazardous." and "horrendous. Urioilslv. all the words in this latter group are adjectives, while the former group is composed entirely of nouns. It seems somewhat strange to speak o beheading a word of one Syllable and leaving a word of two syllables; but tlieic several monosyllables that admit of- this possibility. If wo behead either caged, "raged," or "waged," used as „ monosyllables, we have the word .aged, which, when used as an adjective, is pro; nounced with two syllables. Staged, twice beheaded, leaves tho same result. Bettor yet, behead "vaguo. or rtaguc or twice behead "pln«'m. fln V°n "aeue," which admits of only bisyllabic pronunciation. Likewise "shrugged twice beheaded leaves the different word There are over thirteen hundred words in our language ending with the long h sound, such as "tree,;' etc.; but even this remarkable showing is eclipsed by words ending in "ess," as there are fourteen hundred of these. From the citation of these two cases it might be inferred that tho root has a sinecure to select a rhyme for any. word he chooses to employ; but such is not alwavs tho case. Exclusvo of the ordinal numerals, most of which- are unrhymable, there aro more than sixty words that have no rhyme. Well-known examples of these include such words as R"">„ "month,'? "orange," "scarce. . f l ™/. "window," "warmth," "spoilt, and 'if ?s perhaps not generally known that there is a verse in the Bib e that contains all but one of the letters of the alphabet. This, however, is a fact, as in the twenty-first verse of s^, e t chapter of Job aro found all the letters but J. This is, of course, purely a coincidence; for. as tho verse contains fortythreo words and one hundred and seventy-three letters, it would be unworthv of note if done by design. \ While our language does not contain such long words as are found in some other tongues, nor so many words of unusual length, still we have several that are awkwardly long for conversational purposes. We bnve " philnnrogcnitivcness." with twenty letters; "interconrrovertibilities," with twentv-one; "lntercommunicabilities," with twenty-two; "disproportionablenesses," with . twentythree ; and "transnbstnntiationalists" and "contradistinguishability," each containing twenty-four letters. But bow insignificant are all these compared with the Dutch "Albasserdaramerlandnrenopsteckersvergaderinlokaal!" An effective little word is "svnacategorematic," ns it mnnnges to compress eight syllables into seventeen letters.