New Records...and Other Odds and Ends
SORTA new records. The second one's not mine and the first is a bit "wobbly."
More tidbits from the first-ever issue of Word Ways. Let’s see if we can improve on it!
ITEM: One of the subjects in that first issue is “typewriter words.” These are words using only part of a typical keyboard, such as its first line, QWERTYUIOP. How long can a word get using only the letters in QWERTYUIOP? Word Ways #1.1 gives two twelve-letter medical terms, PITUITOTROPE (one strongly influenced by his pituitary gland) and UROPYOURETER (an infected ureter).
Word Ways would return to this idea a few times over the years. I believe its last attempt to expand on that record was in 2005, when Darryl Francis discovered a thirteen-letter proper name, TUTTORQORTOOQ, from Tuttorqortooq Island, off the coast of Greenland. In the same piece, Darryl mentions improper twelve-letter instances PROPRIETORIE (an old variant spelling of proprietory) and PRETTYPRETTY (overly decorative).
However, I’d like to suggest TEETERTOTTER as an addition to the 12-letter class and propose a new record-setter for improper words: the thirteen-letter TEETERTOTTERY.
“Teetertotter” is often hyphenated as “teeter-totter,” and the hyphen is on a different typewriter-line than any letters. But the unhyphenated form appears in multiple trusted resources (see links). “Teetertottery” is not in most dictionaries, but its meaning is easy to infer. And it can be found in the wild, both unhyphenated here and hyphenated here, here, and here.
In the past, I’ve jumped the gun by declaring something a record that turned out not to be. This time, I’ve done more homework, but I realize any word without its own entry in a major dictionary might be considered an edge case. If you have feelings on this matter, write in, and we’ll see what comes of this one!
ITEM!: The issue contains the French word hétérogénéité (heterogeneity) and lists it as a record-holder for containing five accent marks. Researching this, I found at least two other French words with five marks: hétérogénéisé (heterogenized), and éphéméréité (ephemerality as a concept). There’s an atoll off Tahiti named Héréhérétué, too. Some claim décérébélé (“with a removed cerebellum”) and hémidécérébellé (“with half a removed cerebellum”), but these look extremely rare.
Looking outside of French yields two Hungarian terms, újjáépítéséről (“about rebuilding”) and újjáválaszthatóságáról (“about reelectability/reelection”), with seven accents each. I can’t claim credit for finding these—they come from Ádám Szegi, Tamas Lepesfalvi, and Stuart Kidd, cited in A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia—but I do think they should be considered joint record-holders until further notice.
Almost all these accents are homogeneous acute marks—which makes the use of hétérogénéité kind of ironic. Wouldn’t it be better as hétêrogënèitē? I know of no word in French, Hungarian, or any other language that incorporates every accent mark common in that language. But the prior source cites a two-word phrase in Hungarian that does that trick: árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép (“flood-proof mirror drilling machine”).
ITEM!: The issue also contained four words for “foreplay” that I’d never heard before: contrectation, paizogony, paraphilemia, and sarmassation. Paraphilemia has a more perverse connotation than the other three. We really needed a lot of code words to talk about sex-adjacent stuff back then, didn’t we? Still, I’d love to hear “sarmassation” in a Megan Thee Stallion lyric.
ITEM!: Dmitri Borgmann points out that the state of Louisiana contains the whole USA.
ITEM!: Edward L. Lee points out that while the turkey is a North American bird, its English name suggests it comes from Turkey, while the French words for it, dindon and dinde, suggest “Indian” (when read as d’Indon/d’Inde). Update: Ash points out that “הודו” in Hebrew translates to both India (the country) and turkey (the bird) as well. Fun!
Tomorrow: an Ubercross!
In the Colloquy section of the August 2015 issue of "Word Ways" Jeff Grant provided two citations for the 15-letter specimen PROTOTYPEWRITER.
https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5434&context=wordways
The Hebrew הודו means both turkey and India as well.