In Word Ways #3.1, Darryl Francis constructed word chains that ran through the alphabet, one as short as he could get it and the other as long…
AB, BAC, COD, DE, EF, FIG, GASH, HI, IGEJ, JAK, KIL, LAM, MAN, NO, OP, PONTACQ, QUAR, RAS, SIT, TU, UNOV, VOW, WAX, XRAY, YEZ, ZA
ABSCOULOMB, BACTERIOTHERAPEUTIC, CHONDROALBUMINOID, DIPHENYLQUINOMETHANE, ENKERCHIEF (or EARTHQUAKE-PROOF) , FABLEMONGERING (or FERTILIZER-CRUSHING), GRASSHOPPERISH, HOMALOSTERNII, INATHGANJ, JESTINGSTOCK, KINEMATOGRAPHICAL, LAEMODIPODIFORM, MICRODETERMINATION, NONPARIELLO (or NOV-ESPERANTO), OBSERVERSHIP, PONTACQ, QUINQUETUBERCULAR. REPRESENTATIONALISTS, SUPERACKNOWLEDGEMENT, TOROROKONBU, ULANOV, VANDEW, WHEELBOX, XYLOGRAPHICALLY, YEZ, ZONOPLACENTALIA
In both cases, place names span the IJ and UV areas, with Igej, Inathganj, Unov, and Ulanov. The place name Pontacq and the word yez (a dialectic variant of you) appear in both lists. Francis also made a start on lists moving backward:
Would the reader like to try his or her hand at the construction of various back ward chains? For the largest possible chain, we suggest ZYGOMATICOMAXILLARY and YUNX as the first two words. For the last two words, we suggest BLEPHAROBLENNORRHEA and AUSTERLITZ. In the case of the shortest backward chain, we suggest the reader begin with ZANY and YEX and end with BA and ADZ. The task of filling in the remaining two groups of twenty-two words is the reader’s.
I thought I’d see how we could do today, building on Francis’ example and maintaining his basic rules—place names okay, hyphenated words fine as an alternative, but no multi-word phrases or initialism because then it’s not really a word chain.
I’m going to confine myself to “short” and “accessible” versions of the chain. It’s possible to go longer than Francis’ long versions (Ishwarganj is one letter longer than Inathganj, for instance). But considering how long some chemical names can get, it would take more time than I have to verify I’d found the longest possible alternative to entries like diphenylquinomethane.
There’s a river (once a lake) in Amsterdam called the IJ, so we can maybe go shorter than the original:
Ab, bac, cod, de, ef, fig, gash, hi, Ij, jak, kal, lam, man, no, op, perq (short for perquisite), Qar (village in Iran), Rs (more than one R, natch), sit, tu, univ (slangy shortening of university), vow, wax, xey (alternative gender-neutral they), yez, za (slang for marijuana—or pizza).
Most of these are fun words to learn about, too. If I were to do a more accessible list, I’d probably replace Qar with quarter and “relax” jak and kal to the alternatives jack and kill. (I’m tempted by bcc, which I use as a verb, but most would probably call it an initialism.)
There’s no everyday word that fits the i*j slot. The closest one gets is interj., an abbreviation for interjection often seen in dictionaries, but it hasn’t crossed over into a casual shortening like perq and univ have.
Now let’s focus on Francis’ “backward challenge,” which (according to my searches) later issues of Word Ways didn’t seem to take up. “Zay” is an interesting word, cited in Wiktionary as a “pronunciation spelling” of say and they which indicates a foreign accent like French or German. (In my experience, cartoonists who want to render “French-accented they” spell it “zey” or “zhey.”) Tentatively accepting it, we get…
Zay, yex (hiccup), x-bow (kind of ship design), wiv (variant of with), vau (Hebrew letter, alternative spelling), ut, Ts, sir, req, quip, po’, on, nom, mil, lek, kaj (Armenian storm spirit), Ji (state that preceded modern Beijing), ish, hag, gif, fee, ed (short for edition or editor), doc, cab, ba, adz.
I considered vu as part of déjà vu, but it didn’t really have an independent meaning in English. Commoner alternatives include zany, Vishnu, lack, jinni, and bra, but there’s no common words for the x*w and k*j spots. I couldn’t even find an unhyphenated alternative to x-bow.
See comments: Darryl himself wrote in to suggest wiv and ut, above. He also mentions Xsnow, a program designed to “make it snow” in graphical user interfaces on Apple and Linux machines. The brand-nameyness of that one makes it an imperfect solution—but it has no hyphen, so the reader can make their own choice there.
And again, I’m more interested in going short and/or common than going long. But I’ll leave the sesquipedalian version of the z-a word chain as an exercise for the next writer!
UT is a musical note in an earlier scale of notes, now replaced by ‘doh’. UT is also a variant of ‘ute’, a utility vehicle.
WIV is listed in The Oxford English Dictionary as a variant of ‘with’, being three letters shorter than WHATEV.