Taxonomy of Wordplay | |
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Contents | previous: Meaning: Adjectives and Adverbs | next: Selected Lists
MiscellaneousSentencesrepeated words, most [3-67,19-167,22-46,29-89,151,284]
see "Repeated Words" article
self-referential [4-240,5-172,7-253,17-242,18-219,20-95,22-46,25-3,74,159]
a. autogram (self-enumerating sentence), incl. reflexicon [25-3,74,131,159,TJ3-90,TJ4-54]
e.g. Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's...
b. autological term (phrase that is an instance of the term it names) [IN3-51]
e.g. "Char Ade" is a charade of "charade"; "noosperism" is a spoonerism of "spoonerism"
e.g. "abbr." is an abbreviation of "abbreviation"
c. self-refuting statement (sentence that violates its own message) [7-113,8-175]
e.g. "Avoid profanity -- dammit!"; "Honk if you hate noise pollution"
d. gematric self-describing sentence (sentence that states its own letter sum) [23-12]
e.g. The gematric constant of this sentence is six hundred fifty-three
nested clauses, most [22-49]
a. supersentence (shortest sentence packing nested structures) [IN2-7]
e.g. Helping win by overcoming what threatened, Lederer, who persisted when challenged, triumphed. (12)
e.g. Whoever rebels, daring oppose by fighting when opposed, which overcomes, conquers. (11)
rhopalism or snowball or increasing or decreasing word length [L135,14-243]
a. number-name rhopalism (words of 2, 3, 4 ... letters sharing first and last letters with TWO, THREE, FOUR ...) [4-39]
e.g. to the fair fluke sphinx station elephant negotiate tabulation
first letters in alphabetical order or reverse alphabetical order
a. every word of the text in alphabetical order [33-314]
e.g. abashed admiration (allicient, aloof) already, an anticipation, anxiousness, arbitrary ...
oronym (shift word boundaries to form another phrase or sentence) [10-79]no repeated word [5-39,9-12,19-92,28-22,30-18,36-236,238]
e.g. Pompton Lakes students' 100-word essay on the assignment itself, not even "a" or "the" used twice
part-of-speech lipogram (no verbs, nouns or adjectives) [38-50,38-137]
e.g. novel with no verbs; Kickshaws imitation: "Verbless yet verbose. Strange publicity surrounding it."
chiasmus or antimetabole (words repeated in reverse order) [40-31,TJ1-11,TJ2-50]
e.g. Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country
e.g. Eat to live, not live to eat
word-order reversal (reversing the words of a phrase gives another phrase) [TJ5-35]
e.g. houseboat > boathouse; racehorse > horserace
a. Lescurian permutation (a few words of a sentence arranged in every possible order) [9-73]
e.g. All roads lead to Rome / All Rome leads to roads / Roads lead Rome to all? (Mathews)
b. mean sidewalk (word- or syllable-unit anagram of a sentence or phrase that shifts its meaning sideways)
[49-315,50-189,49-49]
e.g. SEND PACKING / PEND SACKING / SACK-PENDING / PACK SENDING
antonymic parody (each word replaced by its opposite) [31-71,31-301]
e.g. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? > Will you contrast me with the winter's night? (Morice)
vocabularyclept poetry (the words of one poem rearranged into another), and cento [2-17,85,3-86,139,8-126,151,9-203,31-196,34-212,263]
e.g. vocabularyclept: all the words of one poem reused, rearranged into a different poem
e.g. cento: a poem assembled entirely from lines taken from other poets' poems
a. first-and-last-word text (text composed only of the opening and closing words of an author's works) [25-58,25-96]
e.g. soliloquy built from the first and last words of Shakespeare's plays
exercises in style (one sentence in many constrained variants) [32-314]
e.g. Queneau's Exercices de style: one trivial bus incident retold in 99 different styles
constrained verse forms (double dactyl, drabble, combinatorial verse, constrained limericks) [8-46,9-72,36-29,221,40-205,300,41-81,102,140,TJ4-84]
e.g. double dactyl: Higgledy-piggledy / Benjamin Harrison / Twenty-third president / Was, and, as such ...
e.g. drabble: a complete story in exactly 100 words
a. bouts-rimes (verse written to prescribed end words) [10-239,11-44]
e.g. Bogart's LYDIA KANE acrostic, each line ending on Byron's rhyme words
b. digital verse (verse made only of digits, read aloud as number words that scan and rhyme) [16-41,17-53]
e.g. A dozen, a gross and a score / Plus three times the square root of four ... (12+144+20+3x2 ...)
c. macaronic verse (poem mixing several languages) [9-171]
e.g. Philologos' onomasti Louis / Parla lingue quaranta due ... (five-language limerick)
i. Latinglish verse (lines of four mock Latin principal parts, -o -ere -i -um, that sound like English telegraphese
when read with Latin pronunciation) [46-65]
e.g. Tuinclo, tuinclere, taini, starrum = twinkle-o, twinkler-ay, tiny, star-um (Mancuso)
e.g. Jinglo, bellere, olldi, veium = jingle-o, bell-eray, all de way-um
d. punctured poem (famous first line given an incongruous second line) [8-48,8-161,9-17]
e.g. My heart leaps up when I behold / My pumpernickel green with mold
e. hidden verse (prose passage that, re-lineated, turns out to be a metrical rhymed poem such as a limerick) [46-96]
e.g. Doug Harris's letter "Leaving jump leads apart, I've heard nasty rumours ..." scans as a limerick
f. poetry maze (numbered lines each pointing to two others; only one path gives a rhyming poem) [28-101]
e.g. 64-line Daedalus maze in which only one path gives a 32-line couplet poem
rebus (letters, numbers or positions read as words) [7-201,9-108,152,17-3,88,155,36-31,41-20,138,202,260,266,42-14,TJ8-62]
e.g. STAND over I = I understand
e.g. CHINTA = tea (T) in China
a. vanity license plate (message squeezed into a plate's characters) [19-195,20-141,30-83]
e.g. 4 MY EGO; BEER BUFF; MTN DEW
b. word-rubric rebus (rebus whose rubric is itself a word), incl. reversed rebus [11-235,12-137,12-219,12-233]
e.g. MIND over MATTER = mind over matter
e.g. reversed rebus: ECNALG = backward glance
malaproverb (proverb altered or spliced with another) [8-255,9-86,37-174,38-313]
e.g. We'll burn that bridge when we come to it
catalogue-label text (story threaded from the guide labels of encyclopedia spines or catalogue drawers) [10-238,25-226]
e.g. encyclopedia spine labels read as a story: AMES - ANNA, STEAM - STEW, GIGI - GODDAM
definitional literature (text rewritten by replacing words with their dictionary definitions) [9-71,9-151]
e.g. The cat sat on the mat > The small domesticated feline rested upon the floor covering
emotive conjugation (one trait named kindly for oneself and harshly for others: I am firm, you are obstinate) [2-179,6-139]
e.g. I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool (Bertrand Russell)
homosyntaxism (the syntax of a passage kept as a template and filled with new words) [9-72]
e.g. OuLiPo: a passage's syntax kept as a template, e.g. "The cat sat on the mat" > "A dog lay by the fire"
Irish bull (ludicrous self-contradictory statement) [3-102,20-40]
e.g. It was hereditary in his family to have no children
jabberwocky sentence (nonsense words in a grammatical frame) [9-169]
e.g. The ickle squiggs trazed wombly in the harlish goop
N+7 (every noun of a text replaced by the noun seven entries later in a dictionary) [9-69]
e.g. under that benign skyflower; watched the Mother Gooses fluttering among the heathenesse (Wuthering Heights)
permutable sentence (every ordering of its words is a sentence) [6-103]
e.g. Bob will pat / Will Bob pat? / Pat will Bob / Bob, pat Will / Will, pat Bob / Pat, Bob will
sesquipedalian paraphrase (proverb or nursery rhyme restated in pompous language) [1-87,4-16]
e.g. Self-esteem precedes degradation (pride goeth before a fall)
stacked terminal prepositions (sentence ending with a run of prepositions), most [16-46]
e.g. What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?
line-skip reading (new text made by copying lines of a printed passage and skipping any line that does not follow grammatically) [26-61]spell-checked text (nonsense or literary text rewritten by accepting a spelling checker's substitutions) [21-246]
e.g. 'Was broiled, and the slushy moves / Did gore and gamble in the wage (Jabberwocky spell-checked)
Word listssynonym chains [21-100,47-185]
a. anagram-synonym chain (word turned into another, often its opposite, by alternately transposing and taking a synonym)
[25-102]
e.g. FIRST/RIFTS=GAPS/GASP=GULP/PLUG=STOP/OPTS=ELECTS/SELECT=RARE/REAR=LAST
kangaroo words [1-245,9-111,29-77]
a. antiroo (contains its own antonym) [39-232]
common words: animosity & amity
common words: friend & fiend
synonym squares [12-157,214,252,23-101]oxymorons [23-102]pleonasm (redundant phrase), incl. hydromoron [43-284,44-214,TJ7-37,TJ11-28,WW52.2-77]
e.g. free gift; PIN number; past history
mixed metaphor [34-238,37-119,41-301,44-130,TJ5-17,TJ12-18,IN4-59,WW51.3-101]
e.g. leap off the page like a sore thumb
e.g. put that in your pipe and chew it
malapropism [36-275,TJ3-90,TJ12-12,WW53.3-23]
e.g. a mere bag of shells (bagatelle)
e.g. paramount for tantamount; escalator music for elevator music
a. paronym or confusable pair (look-alike words of distinct meaning often confused) [8-171,8-180,8-208]
common words: luxurious & luxuriant
common words: perspicuous & perspicacious
common words: biennial & biannual
b. bienapropism (malapropism that accidentally tells the truth) [21-227]
e.g. exterminating circumstances; pleasures of adultery; Life begins at contraception
euphemism, incl. letter-word euphemisms [7-172,237,8-110,32-269,37-69,39-17,TJ12-26]
e.g. passed away (died); the F-word
dictionary adjacents (consecutive headwords that read as a phrase) [TJ9-13]
a. fictionary (sentence or story using consecutive dictionary headwords in order, with linking words) [22-175,23-54]
e.g. NIPPY, NIP-UP, NIRVANA, NISAN, NISEI: I did a nippy nip-up to nirvana during Nisan with a nisei
pseudo-hybrid (animal name compounded of other animal names) [TJ8-21]
e.g. horsefly; turtledove; leopard frog; mouse deer
triad (three words in which every pair in order forms a phrase) [45-103]
e.g. six pack dogs (six pack, pack dogs); try one out; pick five up
abecedarian synonym list (a synonym of one concept for each letter A-Z) [9-105,9-175]
e.g. money: assets, bankroll, cash, dollars ... X ray, yellow boys, zillions
contradictory proverbs (pairs of proverbs giving opposite advice) [4-137,18-53]
e.g. Strike while the iron is hot / Act in haste and repent at leisure
largest synonym group (concept with the most standard-English synonyms) [20-26,20-44]
common word: baldness (145 synonyms)
irreversible binomial or wedded words (fixed word pairs joined by and) [27-187]
e.g. kith and kin; hue and cry; wrack and ruin; vim and vigor
pseudo-obscene text (innocent words, often dialect, strung together to read as indecent) [23-149]
e.g. horny (amorous), balling (tracking a fox), cunny-hole (marble hole)
Entire Wordone letter words [5-238]
a. isolated-letter term (dictionary term in which one letter stands alone as a word) [4-100]
e.g. A sharp; B battery; Q fever; X ray
b. two-letter words (all two-letter combinations attested as words) [7-246,8-19,8-104]
uncommon words: aa & qi & xu
number nouns [23-188]autological word (has the property it names) [2-179,9-173,21-131,36-293,37-217,253,38-293,39-60,45-22,74]
common words: short & English & polysyllabic & noun
taxicab word (each part of a compound is a synonym of the whole) [38-293,39-46]
common words: taxicab & pathway
word fugitive or sniglet (coined for an unnamed concept) [37-150,38-137,39-75]
e.g. carperpetuation: vacuuming over a bit of string again and again, then picking it up (Rich Hall)
lexical gap or unpaired word (missing positive or missing derivative) [2-118,37-56,41-102,176,266,TJ11-31,WW51.2-21,WW53.4-71]
e.g. gainly, gruntled and kempt (Espy, "I Dreamt of Couth")
e.g. inept / ept; disgruntled / gruntled; unkempt / kempt
letter-pinpointing word (its meaning designates one of its own letters) [WW52.1-51]
e.g. FOREHEAD (fore of HEAD = H); OFFEND (end of OFF = F); MIDDAY (mid of DAY = A)
aptronym (name suited to its bearer), incl. inaptronyms [9-52,85,93,152,31-150,32-77,206,39-219,40-110,41-20,317,TJ3-90,TJ7-5,TJ7-6,TJ11-22]
e.g. Dr. John Looney (psychiatrist); Wilson Q. Invencion (inventor)
name pun (personal name that reads as a phrase) [31-221,32-59,32-133,33-186,37-3,37-73,37-107,37-151,39-121]
e.g. Warren Peace; Robin Banks; Justin Case
a. mating game (forename of one celebrity joined to the surname of another, as if by marriage, to make a phrase) [27-182]
e.g. Tuesday Weld + Frederick March = Tuesday March
false friends (spelled alike in two languages, different meanings) [8-188,207,9-16,60,126,254,31-158]
e.g. ail (English: be ill; French: garlic); bride (French: bridle)
common word: gift (English: present; German: poison)
a. bilingual homographic text (text that reads, with different meanings, in two languages) [9-60,9-67]
e.g. Mathews' L'Egal Franglais list (ail, bat, bore, bride, car) for texts reading in English and French
definite-article entry (dictionary headword beginning with a definite article) [5-208,6-211]
e.g. the McCoy; hoi polloi; El Paso; la bamba
double-duty word (one word naming both a nationality and an occupation) [4-112,5-168,8-223]
uncommon word: lascar (East Indian sailor)
overspecialized word (word with an improbably narrow meaning) [14-239]
e.g. ucalegon (a neighbour whose house is on fire)
self-applied relation word (word that is the X of the word X) [5-168,6-234,7-50]
e.g. managar is an anagram of "anagram"; lasrever is a reversal of "reversal"
e.g. "mispelling" is a misspelling of "misspelling"
untranslatable word (concept other languages express in one word but English cannot) [3-50]
common word: Schadenfreude (German: pleasure at another's misfortune)
circular dictionary definition (definitions followed until they close on themselves), shortest [6-166,19-232,20-160]
e.g. Web II: "raftman: a raftman" (1)
snowclone or phrasal template (fixed formula with interchangeable slots) [17-175,17-221,18-97]
e.g. From Birth to Death > From Cradle to Grave, Womb to Tomb
e.g. Live Music Is Best > ... Is Best
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