Splitting Hairs and Panting…

Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …

I visited my trusty old barber the other day and when I went to work the following morning, one of my co-workers said, “Hey! You got a haircut.”

“No!” I replied, “I actually got several hairs cut.”

But we don’t call it a “hairscut”, do we?

Getting dressed for work the other morning, I slipped into a pair of pants.

But did I actually don two?

Granted, the pants have two legs but I only have one way to get into them.

Yet, we call them a pair.

My research indicates “pants” is a “linguistic oddity”.

Pants is a “plural tantum” (Latin for “plural only”) a noun which is used only in plural form, or which is used only in plural form in a particular sense or senses.

(See pair of pliers, pair of glasses, etc.)

Can we agree that English is a strange language?

“OUGH” can be pronounced 8 different ways.

“Rough”, “dough”, “ploughman”, Scarborough”, “through”, “cough”, “hiccough” and “thought”.

“Forty” is the only number with the letters in alphabetical order while “one” is the only number with the letters in reverse alphabetical order.

Did some one do that on purpose?

Excluding derivatives, only two words in the English language end in “SHION”…fashion and cushion. although many words end in that sound.

There’s only one English word with 5 vowels in a row…queueing.

Only one English word ends in “mt”…dreamt.

The longest English word without a normal vowel (A-E-I-O-U) is “rhythms”.

Here’s a fun one.

“Therein” is a 7 letter word which contains 13 words spelled using consecutive letters.

“Angry” and “hungry” are the only common English words ending in “gry” although I will admit to being “hangry” on occasion.

“Asthma” and “isthmi” (more than one isthmus) are the only 6 letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no others vowels between.

“Almost” is the longest commonly used word with all the letters in alphabetical order.

Did you know there is only one word with 3 consecutive double letters?

“Bookkeeper”.

“One thousand” contains the letter “a” but NONE of the words from one to nine hundred ninety nine has an “a”.

Some of the English language quirks can be blamed on Latin.

Why the “b” in “debt” and “doubt”?

The “p” in “receipt”.

Old English “iland” became “island” thanks to the Latin word “insula”.

Answer me this.

If writers “write” and painters “paint”, why don’t grocers “groce”, hammers “hamm” or dumpsters “dumpst”?

And, speaking of rhymes, I’m confused by “bomb”, “tomb”, “comb”, “home”, “some”, “dose”, “lose” and “nose”.

If the big drum is ‘bass”, then how can I catch a large-mouthed “bass”?

Why do we “polish” the “Polish” coffee table?

Not watching while they were walking, a seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer.

John had to “write” to the “right” people to keep his ‘rights” during his “rites”.

If I was a dog, this is enough to make me “pant” which is kind of where this all started.