Excellent! I’ve been trying to find some diphthong groups, but you got there first.
Is anybody else working on two or more syllable words? Surely there are some.
sapped, sepped, sipped, sopped, supped
bast, best, BIST, BOST, bust
This is something I do a lot in my poetry.
Words are an endless source of fascination to me.
Burnish, burnoose - varnish, vermouth - furnish, forsooth
Like that.
What exactly was the dream, Zeldar?
I’m bad with remembering dream details, so I’m not 100% sure I was in a true dream state as opposed to “just before waking up” but it was pretty much the way I said in the OP: that last/lest… list came to me and then I began playing with the idea in whatever state I was in and the rest came to me after I was fully awake. Not all that spectacular, really. But I thought it might make for a good OP.
Once upon a time I made it a point of doing “acrostic haiku” so I had a whole bunch of 3-letter words to use as first letters for the lines. I even extended the idea for sonnets and longer forms. You’d be amazed at how that skeleton provided clues for words to continue a thought or image.
A lot of these words I can find only in the newest edition of the Scrabble dictionary:
One syllable:
ball, bell, bill, boll, bull [boll=seed capsule]
dan, den, din, don, dun [dan=martial artist]
fan, fen, fin, fon, fun [fon=variant spelling of foehn]
far, fer, fir, for, fur [fer=for]
hack, hick, heck, hock, huck [huck=cotton toweling]
hap, hep, hip, hop, hup [hep=hip (stylish); hup=marching cadence]
mad, med, mid, mod, mud [med=medical (as in “med student”)]
nab, neb, nib, nob, nub [neb=nib; nob=rich man]
pack, peck, pick, pock, puck
sax, sex, six, sox, sux [okay, so I could only find “sux” in the Urban Dictionary ]
Mixed number of syllables:
tale, tele, tile, tole, tule [tele=television; tole=lacquerware; tule=a fabric]
Two syllables:
dally, delly, dilly, dolly, dully [delly=variant spelling of deli]
hallo, hello, hillo, hollo, hullo [they all mean the same thing]
Great work, bibliophage. I almost went with the “sux” list myself, and with the same proviso/justification. Glad you did.
With the same logic as with “sux” from the Urban Dictionary, I’m willing to accept this as a good two-syllable list. Nice work.
blander, blender, blinder, blonder, blunder
If you accept proper names, you can use Mele as the second term.
Similarly, you could use Muth (hmm, Ellen sounds like she’d be a good Doper).
How about pans, pens, pins, pons, puns?
Better yet. No doubts about “common” with this group. Well done.
How did we miss this one?
mate, mete, mite, mote, mute
Zeldar, I’m fascinated…is there any way you could give me an example of an “acrostic haiku”? I have an idea what you mean, but with some things, I’m visual. And, I love the challenge of writing good poetry alongside the additional challenge of staying within a particular wordgame-type framework.
Wow, most impressive.
And, bibliophage, I am awed by your prowess. However, I cannot help pointing out that tulle is a kind of fabric; tule is a kind of reed.
One more…
ram, rem (unit of measurement for radiation), rim, Rom (a Gypsy), rum
Pant, pint, pent, pont*, punt.
*It’s French. Who am I to let technicalities get in the way?
Pale, Pele (the soccer player), pile, pole, pule (whimper).
And for the super-short:
an, en (either the letter, or a printing measure), in, on, un (as in “young un”).
It’s no big mystery, and I didn’t mean to imply that those acrostic haiku were good poetry! The idea was to use some three-letter word vertically as the initial letters of the lines. Here’s an off-the-cuff example, with no real thought applied:
Posting at Straight Dope
Almost requires some thinking
Never mind: just write
It didn’t really matter if the acrostic word related to the content. It was just a gimmick.
Sorry to have implied there might be a lot to it. 