I got an e-mail from my father with a number of “quirky facts” on it. I’d love to de-bunk as many of them as I can, becuase it makes me feel like a big man.
One such “quirky fact” is that duck quacks don’t echo. I know Cecil addressed this in a column only to prove that they do indeed echo (why wouldn’t they!?). Here are some that sound suspect (and I bet you folks can refute…)
The only 15-letter English word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”.
“Stewardesses” is the longest English word typable by the left hand alone.
There are no English words that rhyme with the words “month”, “orange”, “silver”, and “purple”.
It also claimed that firehouse stairs are traditionally spiral because the horses learned to ascend the straight ones, and that Koala pawprints are identical to human fingerprints.
My apologies if I missed these subjects as already discussed.
Roses are red,
Violets are purple.
Sugar is sweet
And so’s maple surple.
Roger Miller
“To do her justice, I can’t see that she could have found anything nastier to say if she’d thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
Dorothy L. Sayers Busman’s Honeymoon
while it isn’t really appropriate, for the sake of knowledge, there is a word “murple” that is… er… related to farting. its slang, so you may be hard pressed to find it though
I can’t help you, but since my mother forwards me every damn email she, my dad, or the dog gets, I can empathize. That’s all, really. Also, if anyone understands how to translate the phrase “Please stop sending me those jokes; I’ve already heard them” into Mom, please let me know.
“I’ll tell you a secret, baby - maybe you can’t do better - gotta settle for second best” - the Judybats
I can type any danged word you want using only the left hand (or even, only the forefinger of the left hand) since I come from a hunter/peckerers culture and am not bound by the laws of typists or Gregg.
Thanks a lot. Here I was thinking I made a brilliant discovery when I stumbled across “AMBIDEXTROUSLY” with my daughter’s alphabet blocks last year. I guess Dad has one-upped me.
No. “Runn’th” and its ilk (“punn’th” and “sunn’th”) are barely passable, but a rhyme (at least in standard English use) has to start on the vowel of an accented syllable. The word isn’t pronounced “billiONTH”.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Hmmm. Didn’t realize that accents were important. My Webster’s II just says a rhyme has the same terminal sound, which to me means the last syllable.
Thus for purple I get any word ending in “-ple”. People, apple, multiple. But with the accent rule, that explains why people feel it necessary to rhyme the last two syllables.
Regarding orange - depends on how you pronounce it. Either lozenge (la senj) or flange (flanj).