Long Bodies, No Heads

Making the tall a little shorter.

In “Beheadments,” a piece from 1973’s Word Ways #6.4, Ralph G. Beaman plays with a number of different beheadments. In case that term is unfamiliar, a “beheadment” is an operation on a viable word that leaves another viable word by removing only its first letter. Remove the top of FART to get ART, remove the top of FRIZZ to get RIZZ.

A similar removal of the last letter (turning PRINCESS into PRINCES or FART into FAR) is called a curtailment. As I said about two years ago, there’s no real widely accepted term for a removal of the middle letter—I suggested heart-ripping then, but disembowelment sounds right to me now.

I won’t go through all the variations Beaman tried, but I’m intrigued by his first list, which included the longest “beheadable” word he could find for every letter in the alphabet:

Crossing off the first letter of each word and seeing the new word that remains is left as an exercise for the reader.

Some of these words are pretty obscure to modern eyes (and were probably obscure to 1970s readers, too). When I search for aquintocubitalism, for instance, Google at first thinks I mean anticapitalism before grudgingly offering up some scientific articles from the late 1800s and thenabouts. Aquintocubitalism and its opposite quintocubitalism are terms from ornithology. A quintocubital (or quincubital) bird has five feathers on its wing that roughly correspond to the five fingers of the human hand. Even those who use this term prefer the shorter form aquincubitalism.

There’s another reason I’m not too fond of aquintocubitalism as an example—quintocubitalism is just its opposite. The missing a here is the a- prefix found in words like asymmetry and asexuality. When composing my list, I elected not to use words that were direct antonyms of each other, which ruled out asymptomatically, many other a-words, and any relevant words beginning with thence or never. I also left out variant spellings and any word that would reduce to a direct synonym, like denumerabilities. The M, N, P, and Y pairs in the group below still have related meanings, but those meanings, I feel are distinct enough to be interesting.

ATROPHYING → TROPHYING

BLITHESOMENESSES → LITHESOMENESSES

CRAFTSMANSHIPS → RAFTSMANSHIPS

DELECTABILITIES → ELECTABILITIES

EMOTIONLESSNESSES → MOTIONLESSNESSES

FUTILITARIANISMS → UTILITARIANISMS

GASTRONOMICALLY → ASTRONOMICALLY

HAIRLESSNESSES → AIRLESSNESSES

ICONICITIES → CONICITIES

JOCULARITIES → OCULARITIES

KINAESTHETICALLY → INAESTHETICALLY

LIONIZATIONS → IONIZATIONS

MEXPLOITATION → EXPLOITATION

NETIQUETTE → ETIQUETTE

OPACIFICATIONS → PACIFICATIONS

PREADMINISTRATIONS → READMINISTRATIONS

QUINTAS → UINTAS // QATARIS → ATARIS

REVOLUTIONARILY → EVOLUTIONARILY

SELECTIVENESSES → ELECTIVENESSES

TRUSTINESSES → RUSTINESSES

UPREACHING → PREACHING

VIDEOGRAPHIES → IDEOGRAPHIES

WIMPISHNESSES → IMPISHNESSES

XANTHEMIA → ANTHEMIA

YOURSELVES → OURSELVES

ZOOLOGISTS → OOLOGISTS

The B, E, G, K, R, and Y pairings are essentially or exactly the same in both lists. So is one of the Q pairings. Purists may object to the few proper names on the list, especially ATARIS, but I think the Atari consoles are part of modern usage at this point.

A lot of -NESSES here; I could’ve elected/selected to exclude those too on the basis that they don’t show up much in everyday speech while their singular counterparts do. But I think they’re gettable.

GASTROPHOTOGRAPHY and ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY may be words with intuitively obvious meanings, but they’ve fallen out of favor as we’ve developed more advanced imaging technologies we no longer classify as “photography.”

Tomorrow: A beheadment micross!