A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia, Page 1

When the guidelines for etymology in Webster's Third were nearing completion, Gove took time out to add the story of dord to the lore of how things can go wrong in dictionary making. Dord was a word that had appeared spontaneously and had found a quiet niche in the English language two decades earlier. It was recorded in Webster's Second in 1934 on page 771, where it remained undetected for five years. It disappeared from the dictionary a year later without ever having entered common parlance. The facts, which had been established years earlier through a search of company files, were as follows, as abridged from Gove's explanation.

The lack of an etymology for dord, meaning "density," was noted by an editor on February 28, 1939, when he was perusing the dictionary. Startled by the omission, he went to the files to track down what had happened and what needed to be done. There, he found, first, a three-by-five white slip that had been sent to the company by a consultant in chemistry on July 31, 1931, bearing the notation "D or d, cont/ density." It was intended to be the basis for entering an additional abbreviation at the letter D in the next edition. The notation "cont," short for "continued," was to alert the typist to the fact that there would be several such entries for abbreviations at D.

A change in the organization of the dictionary possibly added to the confusion that followed. For the 1934 edition, all abbreviations were to be assembled in a separate "Abbreviations" section at the back of the book; in the previous edition words and abbreviations appeared together in a single alphabetical listing (which is how they again appeared in the Third Edition.) But after the original slip was typed for editorial handling, it was misdirected. Eventually, it came to be treated with the words rather than with the abbreviations.

Th editorial stylist who received the first typed version should have marked "or" to be set in italics to indicate that the letters were abbreviations (D or d). But instead, she drew a continuous wavy line underneath to signify that "D or d" should be set in boldface in the manner of an entry word, and a label was added, "Physics & Chem." Since entry words were to be typed with a space between letters, the editorial stylist may have inferred that the typist had intended to write d o r d; the mysterious "cont" was ignored. These errors should have been caught when the word was retyped on a different color slip for the printer, but they were not. The stylist who received this version crossed out the "cont" and added the part-of-speech label n for noun.

"As soon as someone else entered the pronunciation," Gove wrote, "dord was given the slap on the back that sent breath into its being. Whether the etymologist ever got a chance to stifle it, there is no evidence. It simply has no etymology. Thereafter, only a proofreader had final opportunity at the word, but as the proof passed under his scrutiny he was at the moment not so alert and suspicious as usual."

The last slip in the file -- added in 1939 -- was marked "plate change imperative/urgent." The entry was deleted, and the space was closed up by lengthening the entry that followed. In 1940 bound books began appearing without the ghost word but with a new abbreviation. In the list of meanings for the abbreviation "D or d" appeared the phrase "density, Physics." Probably too bad, Gove added, "for why shouldn't dord mean density?"

Some non-existent places are GOBLU and BEATOSU, which appeared as towns on the 1979-80 Michigan State Highway Commission map; they actually represented Go Blue! and Beat OSU, and were deleted from the 1980-81 map [Dickson].

DREAMT is the only common word in English ending in -MT. Others are the obscure adreamt, redreamt, undreamt, or daydreamt.

EARTHLING is first found in print in 1593. Other surprisingly old words are SPACESHIP (1894), ACID RAIN (1858), ANTACID (1753), HAIRDRESSER (1771), MOLE (in connection with espionage, 1622, by Sir Francis Bacon), FUNK (a strong smell, 1623; a state of panic, 1743), MILKY WAY (ca. 1384, but earlier in Latin) and MS. (used instead of Miss or Mrs., 1949). An earlier use of Ms. is on a 1767 tombstone in Plymouth, Massachusetts: "HERE LIES INTERRD [sic] THE BODY OF MS. SARAH SPOONER." However, it is considered a likely mistake by the engraver of the tombstone. A 2002 New York Times article points out that John A. Murphy is credited with a 1972 marketing masterstroke with "Lite, a fine Pilsner beer," but that the OED shows a use of leoht beor in about the year 1000 [Charles Turner, William Safire in Take My Word For It].

Some words consisting only of short letters are overnumerousnesses (18 letters; Rex Gooch, Word Ways, August 1999), overnervousnesses (17 letters; Rex Gooch, Word Ways, August 1999), curvaceousnesses (16 letters; Chris Cole in the Rec.Puzzle Archives), erroneousnesses, nonconcurrences, and verrucosenesses (all 15 letters).

lighttight and lillypilly are the longest words consisting of only long letters. Some nine-leter words are flightily, highlight, and hillbilly [Philip Bennett].

gyp and gyppy (in OSW and OED2) consist only of letters with descenders.

Rex Gooch also gives as words with only "up" letters, tittifill (OED), tikitiki (W2), and libidibi (W2). Other words consisting only of "up" letters are dikdik, titbit, and tidbit.

[Mike Turniansky, Jim Cook, and Stuart Kidd contributed to the letter-size section].

ESCALATOR is one of many words that were originally trademarks but have become ordinary words found in dictionaries. Some other words which were originally trademarks (or still are) are AQUA-LUNG, ASPIRIN, AUTOHARP, BAKELITE, BAND-AID, BREATHALYZER, BVD, CELLOPHANE, CELLULOID, CORNFLAKES, CUBE STEAK, DACRON, DEEPFREEZE, DICTAPHONE, DITTO, DRY ICE, DUMPSTER, FORMICA, FRISBEE, GRANOLA, GUNK, HEROIN, JACUZZI, JEEP, JELL-O, KEROSENE, KLEENEX, LANOLIN, MACE, MIMEOGRAPH, MOXIE, NOVOCAIN, PABLUM, PHILLIPS SCREW, PING-PONG, PLEXIGLAS, POGO STICK, POPSICLE, PYREX, Q-TIP, ROLLERBLADE, SCOTCH TAPE, SHEETROCK, STETSON HAT, STYROFOAM, TABLOID, TARMAC, THERMOS, TRAMPOLINE, VASELINE, VELCRO, WINDBREAKER, YO-YO, ZIPPER [Charles Turner and others]. In addition NYLON was coined by du Pont, although the term was never trademarked [Dan Tilque].

ETAOIN SHRDLU is defined in W3 as "a combination of letters set by running a finger down the first and then the second left-hand vertical banks of six keys of a Linotype machine to produce a temporary marking slug not intended to appear in the final printing." The word comes from the layout of the keys on a Linotype machine. The letters also correspond exactly to the sequence of most frequently used letters found in English writing. That is, "e" is the most frequently occurring letter, followed by "t," etc., according to one study.

EWE and YOU are pronounced exactly the same, yet share no letters in common. Other examples: EYE/I, OX/AUKS, OH/EAU (de cologne), A/EH, AWE/OR (Australian pronunciation) [Dan Tilque, Chris Hendricks, Stuart Kidd, Philip Bennett, Don Kersey]. Dmitri Borgmann adds OUI/WEE, QUAY/KI (a Polynesian palm), CY (pres) /PSI (Greek letter), EYE/AI (three-toed sloth), FEE/PHI (Greek letter), KEY/CHI (Greek letter) and CEE/SI.

FICKLEHEADED and FIDDLEDEEDEE may be the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet. Ted Clarke suggests ILLEFFACEABLE, although he admits this word is not in dictionaries. Gary Rosenberg says he coined CABBAGEHEADED for this category. HIGGLEHAGGLED and GIBBLEGABBLED are given by Dmitri Borgmann in Charles Bombaugh's Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature, ed. Martin Gardner. The Rec Puzzle Archives gives HAMAMELIDACEAE. Allowing proper names, BAECCICIELGEJAKKA (17 letters) is the name of a stream in Norway [Susan Thorpe]. Some shorter words are ACADEMICAL, ALCHEMICAL, ALKALIFIED, BACKFIELD, BACKFILLED, BEMEDALLED, BLACKBALLED, BLACKJACKED, BLACKMAILED, BLEACHABLE, DEACIDIFIED, DEADHEADED, DECALCIFIED, FEEDBACK, FIDDLEBACK, FIDDLEHEAD, FLIMFLAMMED, HIGHBALLED, HIJACKED, IMMEDICABLE, MACADAMIA, and HIJACKED [Stuart Kidd, Philip C. Bennett].