More on WUVZ, QAJAQ, and WUZZY
And a little FUZZY thinking.
I’m kicking the rare-manuscripts piece to tomorrow. I want a little more time to research it, and the search for an “untransadditionable” word of five letters or less continues to draw intriguing discussion!
When I told Janice about all this and how WUZZY had kicked things off, she asked me what a transaddition for FUZZY would be. I found a few, but the neatest and shortest was QUIZZIFY. I assumed it was a word that works similarly to gamify, and it wouldn’t shock me to see it used that way, but Collins has a couple of other definitions.
I also got some correspondence on the matter from Darryl Francis himself. I hope he won’t mind my reproducing his message here, but it’s too good not to share. (I’ve added and adjusted some hyperlinks so you can check out the words he mentions more easily…)
Nice to see you using and updating some of my wordplay material from early editions of Word Ways. If I was writing those articles today, I would probably use different words in various places, having a lot more resources to hand.
buzzworthy is a great find, not around when I penned the Word Ways articles in the 1970s. I think you're right that there are no other dictionary-sanctioned words containing the letters of wuzzy, apart from the trivial fuzzy-wuzzy. But once you venture outside of dictionaries, there are placenames which use those letters. The best—and shortest—find is probably Zuzowy, a village in Poland. It has its own entry in Wikipedia.
Other WUZZY placenames include Wozuczyn and Dzwierzuty, both villages in Poland.
So, how about words containing WUVZ? I can't find any dictionary words spelled solidly. But I can offer a hyphenated one...
well-visualized
Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd edition (1934-1959).
Here's another one, this one only appearing in a quote at the entry quintain in the Oxford English Dictionary ...
gauze-weave
Nearly every other source spells this as two words, rather than the hyphenated form in the OED.
Straying outside of dictionaries, I found this one in Wikipedia ... Uz Daewoo Avto.
Back to dictionaries. Even two-word terms with WUVZ are extremely rare. Here are a couple of examples...
pulverizer harrow
Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd edition (1934-1959)
And how about qajaq? Almost certainly no dictionary-sanctioned words with these letters, but, as before, there are geographical names - places, rivers, etc. The shortest may be Majorqaq, a river in Greenland (it's in Wikipedia). Then there's the triply-rhyming Saqvaqjuac, an Arctic research camp in Canada (with a tricky V as well), also in Wikipedia. And Kangiqsujuaq, a place in Canada (Wikipedia, again). I suspect a detailed gazetteer of Inuit places in Canada and Greenland would throw up a few more.
As ever with this kind of wordplay, it's a question of how far you're prepared to stretch the boundaries. In a dictionary or not? One word, a hyphenated word, two words, three words or more? Placenames? Personal names? And so on!
That's all for now.
Unrelated, but I’ve been looking to share this as well. Producing the last issue of The Journal of Wordplay meant that I was nattering on at home about ambigrams and the fun of trying to make them, and it inspired Janice to join in. This “flip” is both a word and an instruction, which makes it similar in spirit to some of the early ambigrams of Scott Kim. Neither of us are professional designers, but that’s the point—anyone can tool around with this with a little practice!
Tomorrow: Rare manuscripts, for real this time!