Taxonomy of Wordplay | |
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Contents | previous: Pronunciation: homographs | next: Etymology: Acronyms, anagrams, portmanteaus
MiscellaneousEntire Wordgramograms (words that sound like sequences of letters) [B97,3-8,173,19-222,36-139,257]
a. longest
common word: elementarily (LMNTRLE) (12)
uncommon word: eosinophilous (ESNFLS) (13)
b. for each letter
see list Word That Sounds Like Letters, Beginning with Each Letter
c. gramogram text (written in the sounds of letters and digits) [9-75,143,190,32-215,33-234,41-266]
e.g. AL, CCCR! = Hail, Caesar!
e.g. UR 2 GOOD 2 ME 2 BE 4 GOT 10 = You are too good to me to be forgotten
d. letter-sound beheadment (remove a letter-name sound from the front) [34-139]
e.g. begin - B = gin; detour - D = tour
e. alphabet story (the letters A to Z recited in order, heard as a sentence or story) [14-85]
e.g. Hay, be seedy! He-effigy, hate-shy jaky yellow man, oh peek, you are rusty ... (Mathews)
f. digit pun (digits read by their spoken values as words) [9-14]
e.g. Japanese 2983 ni-ku-ya (butcher), 3387 mimi hana (ENT clinic)
g. letter-sound bookends (word begins with the sound of one letter name and ends with that of a vowel letter name) [47-167]
e.g. Elysee (L...A), essay (S...A), Idaho (I...O)
h. self-contained gramogram (word pronounced as letters that it contains in order), vs bulging (sounded letters not all
present) [45-304]
e.g. eMpTy (MT), eNVy, queue (Q); bulging: decay (DK), easy (EZ)
phonetic spellings identical with regular spelling, longest
common word: spendthrifts (12)
uncommon word: transformists (13)
pig latin words that also are words, longest [3-41,168]
common words: plunder => underplay (7)
a. ludling or play language (speech transformed word by word by a fixed rule: pig latin, carney talk) [7-254,8-86]
e.g. Carney: "Kee-a-san yee-a-sao tee-a-salk" = can you talk
e.g. Pig Latin: lout => outlay, rex => x-ray
variable pronunciation, most [8-20]all possible diphthongs, shortest [18-111]spoonerism (initial sounds of two words exchanged), incl. homophonic spoonerisms [31-137,33-186,34-56,34-318,35-183,35-258,36-275,37-40,37-177,38-230,39-185,40-87,40-174,40-202,40-242,40-317,41-209,42-19,42-200,42-232,43-208,44-12,44-150,44-223,44-254,45-11,TJ1-11,TJ3-42,TJ5-5,TJ5-22,TJ5-28,IN2-54,WW51.2-39,WW52.1-39,WW52.3-52,WW53.2-16]
e.g. Al Gore = galore; Bush, Gore = gush, bore
e.g. Deep water / Weep, daughter!
a. spoonerhyme or shuttle rhyme (verse whose paired lines or rhyme pairs are spoonerisms of each other), incl. anachuttle
verse [4-51,5-91,5-116,6-234,7-88,16-87,21-96]
e.g. By air I bear hoar fur for her
e.g. Some things Thumb sings seem dumb, deem some
b. eye spoonerism (word pair swapping letters like a spoonerism, but through eye rhymes, so the sounds don't swap) [45-311]
e.g. rolling stone / strolling one; slavish lacker / lavish slacker; cool wrap / wool crap
phonetic reversal or phonetic palindrome (sounds reversed give another word, or the same) [3-171,40-110,42-181,43-254,44-209,44-290,TJ2-21,TJ3-88,WW53.3-44]
common words: seal & lease
e.g. say abayas
aural palindrome (sounds the same when the recording is played backwards) [IN5-73]
e.g. EARACHES ARE SCARY; YEAH RIGHT
e.g. OMINOUS CINEMA; FUNNY ENOUGH
homophonic reversal and reverse homophonic charade (pieces read by sound in reverse order) [31-140,32-109,34-212,39-46]
e.g. CY => ICE; KIM => MICK; CATS => STACK (letter sounds read in reverse)
anguish languish (text rewritten in sound-alike words) [30-276,31-71,32-187,32-283,35-147,36-247,39-222,40-331,41-102,41-264,45-56,TJ6-57]
e.g. Furry Dale = fairy tale; ladle gull = little girl
e.g. Eye halve a spelling chequer
a. name verse or nymorhyme (familiar verse rewritten as a string of real personal names) [28-106,28-172]
e.g. Liddell Beau Pee Paz Last Er Shipp = Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
homophone sequence (consecutive words all homophones), most [5-131,30-45,102,202]
e.g. Ay, I eye aye-aye aye. (6)
e.g. lox locks locks' locks; Bea sees seas seize C's
interlingual homophone [44-302,45-93]
e.g. Hebrew torah / Japanese tora (tiger); Israeli dag / English duck
fractured or homophonic translation [10-15,31-316,32-104,TJ3-90]
e.g. Un petit d'un petit / S'etonne aux Halles = Humpty Dumpty / Sat on a wall (Mots d'Heures)
a. literal translation (idioms rendered word for word from another language) [20-210]
e.g. "there sits no dry bread in it", "see the future dark in"
b. round-trip translation (phrase translated into another language and back) [4-218]
e.g. out of sight, out of mind => invisible idiot
mondegreen (misheard phrase) [41-102,41-176,43-55,43-94,43-98,43-243,TJ3-19,TJ3-88,TJ4-7,TJ6-7]
e.g. laid him on the green => Lady Mondegreen
e.g. Gladly the cross I'd bear => Gladly, the cross-eyed bear
onomatopoeia, compared across languages [8-12,87,34-184,265,39-187,256,TJ3-88]
e.g. dog's bark: bow-wow (English), ouah-ouah (French), haf-haf (German)
a. forced onomatopoeia (ordinary words voiced so as to sound like their meanings) [11-125]
e.g. slow said slowly, higher said high, louder said loudly, sleepy said sleepily
b. spelled nonverbal sounds (conventional spellings of clicks, hums and other non-speech noises) [21-180]
e.g. TSK-TSK, TCHK-TCHK, BRRR, uh-huh
c. comic-strip sound word (coined onomatopoeia for noises, classified by vowel for pitch and loudness and consonants for
duration) [24-97,25-119]
e.g. BUMP, SPLAT, FOOM; SHOOF (shirt falling while standing on one's head)
phonestheme (sound cluster associated with a meaning) [38-26,TJ11-15]
e.g. -ash, words of violent action: bash, crash, gash, smash, splash, thrash
ghoti (respelling with letter groups from other words' pronunciations) [31-140,39-187]
e.g. GHOTI = fish (laugh, women, nation)
e.g. NOST LIEUT TOLON = no left turn (provost, lieutenant, colonel)
phonetic vowel rotation (one consonant frame with each vowel sound in turn) [10-61,35-292,44-155,191,261]
e.g. mate-mete-mite-mote-mute; bait-beet-bight-boat-beaut
phonetic AEIOU word (each long-vowel letter sound once) [44-286,45-11]
uncommon words: micronucleate & nucleotidase & nucleosidase
definitive homophone (word or part sounds like a synonym) [40-31,40-256]
e.g. expense: pence; rower: oar; shriek: eek; borrow: owe
tense homophones (past tense next to a homophone of its present) [45-59]
e.g. placed plaice; serf surfed; aided aide
a-homophone phrase (a + word + word whose parts sound alike) [33-282]
e.g. about a bout; a parent apparent; adduce a deuce
magic-e pair (final E changes the vowel sound) [41-20]
e.g. hat => hate; kit => kite; cut => cute
a. long-short vowel pair (dropping one letter of a vowel digraph turns its long sound into the short one) [47-289]
e.g. beat/bet, mean/men, chief/chef, slight/slit
high-contrast spelling (same spelling, different sounds; different spellings, same sound) [32-133,32-283]
e.g. tough, though, through, bough, cough (one spelling, many sounds)
e.g. English women has-beens in Tientsin build counterfeit pyramids busily (short i spelled 9 ways)
transatlantic shibboleth (pronounced differently in British and American English) [34-136]
common words: schedule & lieutenant & tomato & zebra
tongue twister [TJ2-12]
e.g. Those who seized Caesar's scissors were Caesar's scissors' seizers
deceptive proper-name pronunciation (place names and surnames pronounced far from their spelling) [4-117,5-36]
e.g. Leicester (lester), Auchinleck (affleck), Colquhoun (cahoon)
pronunciation longer than spelling [5-150]
e.g. AAA (triple-a), viz (videlicet), George V Coast (the fifth)
stutterance (sentence in which each unit of sound is immediately repeated: Claude clawed) [5-146]
e.g. Claude clawed; God, free Godfrey; Auntie, this is antithesis
nautonym or phonetic tautonym (word pronounced as a repeated sound sequence though not spelled as a tautonym), incl. phrase nautonyms [47-106,47-172,47-265,48-10,48-169,48-240,48-242]
common words: cocoa & entente & ninny
e.g. phrase nautonyms: Cree Creek, pipe eye
Subset of Wordsilent letters
a. longest sequence [5-150]
uncommon word: brougham (4, ugha)
b. for each letter [B46,6-164,15-90,152,212,20-47]
i. at beginning
see list Word That Begins with Each Silent Letter
ii. internally
see list Word That Contains Each Silent Letter
iii. at end
see list Word That Ends with Each Silent Letter
c. homophones, for each letter [10-26,83,152,11-89]
see list Homophones Differing by Each Letter
d. pronounced when suffixed [18-240,19-22]
see list Word That, When a Suffix is Added, Reveals a Silent Letter
e. pronunciation-preserving deletion (beheading or curtailing leaves the pronunciation unchanged) [31-53]
e.g. queue => q (pronunciation unchanged)
ghost letters, for each letter [B88,9-106,175,243]
see "Ghost" article
suffix, most variable pronunciation [4-118,7-55,243,11-217,26-87,31-57]
common words: borough, thorough, tough, hiccough, nought, bough, trough, though, ought, cough, through
[see "Pronunciation Variants" article]
word with different pronunciations of same letter, for each letter [11-176,237]
see list Word with Two Different Pronunciations of Each Letter
a. repeated bigram pronounced two ways [40-31,40-110,41-266,43-249]
common words: arbitrary & accuracy & warfare
phoneme, variable spelling, most [8-232,11-217,12-24,90,17-224,18-25,101,184,36-106,190,48-195]one letter, most phonemes [17-224,219,18-23,101,19-213]rules for pronouncing G violated [11-239,18-62,87,153,219]birdsong phrase (bird call rendered as a human phrase) [2-79]
e.g. "Bucket of wheat", "Monkey wrench", "Oh, pull 'er ear", "Hello there, T.W."
play-language word (word that becomes another word when put into a play language such as Turkey Irish or back slang) [10-94,12-215]
e.g. Turkey Irish: dull > double, bull > bubble, hub > hubbub
phonetic lipogram (text avoiding a class of speech sounds, or using only certain classes) [4-34,9-145,9-190]
e.g. I know a lazy sophomore / who never answers one with sass (Hockett; no stop consonants)
unspeakable or unwritable sentence (meaningful only in writing, or only in speech) [3-41]
e.g. There are three ways to pronounce SLOUGH (writable, not speakable)
e.g. there are three ways to spell /tu:/ (speakable, not writable)
most beautiful and ugliest words (words judged most euphonious or most repellent in sound and sense) [25-224,26-23]
e.g. most beautiful: chimes, lullaby, tranquil; ugliest: gobbledygook, ostrich, spokesperson
Contents | previous: Pronunciation: homographs | next: Etymology: Acronyms, anagrams, portmanteaus |