What five-letter word doubles its size when you add two letters?

Factual Questions
1

I heard this one recently. I do not have the answer.

2

Well, I can think of a three-letter word that increases in size by 10 times by adding 2 letters:

six + ty = sixty.

3

Redouble.

4

I realized that my previous response was perfectly clear.
5-letter word: double
add two letters: redouble

5

double is six letters. I’ve actually heard the answer to this riddle before, but damned if I can remember!

6

I don’t think this is right but I’ll throw it out there anyway.

count
recount

Recounting doesn’t mean adding the new count to the old one, so there is no doubling of size.

[sub]Please, please don’t let these two simple words make this thread deteriorate into something that belongs in GD. If that happens, my deepest apologies to the OP and to the mods.[/sub]

7

I guess adding the prefix ‘bi-’ to a word would be cheating. ‘Polar’ would become ‘bi-polar’, etc.

I can do a 10X increase by adding one letter - eight+y = eighty

8

It’s riddlin’ question time!

What five letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
A man was found lying dead in the snow. There were no tracks leading to or from the body. He had a backpack strapped to his back. He did not die of thirst, hunger or cold and he was not murdered. What was in his backpack that lead to his death?

Frank went into a hardware store. Pointing to the item he wanted to purchase, he asked the assistant “How much will one cost?” and was told “Three dollars”. Then he asked how much will twelve cost?" and was told “six dollars” “How much will two hundred cost?” “Nine dollars” said the assistant. What was Frank buying?

9

A parachute.

The numbers themselves. One digit = $3.

That still doesn’t answer the OP though :slight_smile:

Doctor Jackson I think bi- is on the right track. That’s what I was trying to come up with.

10

It could also refer to other measures of size, as in this one :

What three-letter word increases its size 63,360,000 times when you add one letter?

Or why is “smiles” the longest word in the English language?

11

“what five letter becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?”

short (short+er= shorter)

12

I’m thinking the first is 10^X^X or something like that.

13

My guess for the first one - mil (short for millimeter?) becomes mile?

I’m sure about the second one - “smiles” is longest word because it’s… (ready to groan?) …a mile from one end to the other (or from the first letter to the last)…
I can double a 3 letter word by adding 3 more letters: TEN becomes TwENty…
OK, here’s my entry - what three letter word diminishes by about 143X when you add two letters? (I THINK I’m right about the #'s…)

Still working on the original…

14

No answer to the OP, but something more to throw in the mix…

An eight-letter word meaning “very big” becomes a word that means “very small” when five letters are added to the end. Name the two words.

15

infinite, infinitesimal

16

How about “other” and “another”?

17

bi means double doesn’t it?

18

I like the ‘another’ thing, but it seems to still only a single thing replacing the other.
Just to come back in, DropOfaHat was correct with the questions I posed. The mil I’m using is the American term for 1/1000 of an inch (1 mile = 63.36x10[sup]6[/sup] mils). My apologies to British dopers, for whom the equivalent term might be thou (mil being sometimes used for milliliter).

And if the answer to the OP is a unit of measurement, it might be found [URL=“http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html” here , a rather comprehensive guide to units of measurement.

panama jack
2.71 covados

19

Oops, that link should be written :

here

which resolves to
here.

20

How about ANTIC?
Add two letters: QUANTIC

According to Scrabble,
A = 1
N = 2
T = 2
I = 2
C = 4
Word Score: 11

Add two letters:
Q = 8
U = 3
Word Score: 22

FYI, a quick search at Bartelby’s gives the following definition:
Quantic: A homogeneous polynomial having two or more variables.