Rod L. Evans Ph.D - Tyrannosaurus lex: the marvelous book of palindromes, anagrams, and other delightful and outrageous wordplay

TYRANNOSAURUS LEX TYRANNOSAURUS LEX THE MARVELOUS
BOOK OF
PALINDROMES,
ANAGRAMS,
AND OTHER
DELIGHTFUL AND
OUTRAGEOUS
WORDPLAY Rod L. Evans, Ph.D. A PERIGEE BOOK A PERIGEE BOOKPublished by the Penguin GroupPenguin Group (USA) Inc.375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication.

Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. Copyright 2012 by Rod Evans Text design by Tiffany Estreicher All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions. PERIGEE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The P design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First edition: June 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Evans, Rod L., 1956 Tyrannosaurus lex : the marvelous book of palindromes, anagrams, and other delightful and outrageous wordplay / Rod L. Evans.1st ed. p. cm. A Perigee book.

Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-1-101-58863-5 1. Palindromes. 2. Plays on words. Anagrams. 4. 4.

Word games. I. Title. PN6371.E93 2012 793.734dc23 2012002319 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Most Perigee books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: Special Markets, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deep thanks go to my literary agents, Sheree Bykofsky and Janet Rosen; my excellent editor at Perigee, Meg Leder, who has always believed in me and given me invaluable guidance; the talented freelance copyeditor Candace Levy; my friend Justin Gruver, who typed much of the manuscript; my friend Robin Hudgins, who also typed a good portion of the manuscript and formatted it; my friend Rob Stewart and colleague Elaine Dawson, who also copyedited the manuscript; investment adviser and prolific author John Train, whose classic John Trains Most Remarkable Names not only inspired my interest in peoples names but also served as the principal source for my subsection Names That Belong or Have Belonged to Real People; and last but not least, Richard Lederer, whose work has inspired me. This book has been enriched by the hard work of many people. I am grateful. INTRODUCTIONWebsters Collegiate Dictionary defines wordplay as verbal wit. Wordplay involves manipulating or calling attention to letters, sounds, or meanings. When most people think of wordplay, they think of anagrams and palindromes, which are indeed excellent examples.

Take Albert Einstein. Rearrange the letters, and you can get the anagram ten elite brains. Rearrange dormitory, and you can get dirty room. Now consider the palindrome. The sentence Dennis and Edna sinned spells the same forward and backward (after suitably spacing some letters). Do geese see God? and lonely Tylenol are similarly versatile.

Although anagrams and palindromes are important and delightful examples of verbal wit, they represent only two large rooms of a mansion in which one will find not only wordplay but also scholars, authors, and especially comedians. In fact, some of the finest wordplay comes from comedians. The comedian Steven Wright once said, There will be a rain dance on Friday, weather permitting. The more one reflects on the line, the wittier it becomes. The rain dance, a serious religious ritual used in urgent situations, is treated in the funny line as a nonurgent social event, such as a cotillion. The qualification weather permitting makes the joke, humorously contradicting what precedes it.

Obviously, the purpose of a rain dance is to produce rain. If it rains, there is no need to have the dance. Yet the qualification weather permitting treats the rain dance as if it were a social engagement whose purpose has nothing to do with the weather. Steven Wrights joke about a rain dance illustrates that language is deeply connected to culture and that a simple-looking one-liner can require a good deal of linguistic and cultural knowledge to appreciate. To understand the joke, the listener must know, among other things, that a rain dance is radically different from a recreational dance. Similarly, if someone says that he was so poor that he couldnt afford even a birthday suit, his joke requires understanding that a birthday suit (nakedness) is radically different from a suit of clothes.

Indeed, a birthday suit is no more a suit than a decoy duck is a duck. The word birthday in birthday suit, the word decoy in decoy duck, and the word counterfeit in counterfeit money negate the nouns they modify. Each is an example of an alienans, to which a chapter of this book is devoted. Verbal wit often involves irony, creating an expectation only to dash it, as when comedian George Carlin once said, In America, anyone can become president. Thats the problem. The statement that in America anyone can become president is taken from its customary context, in which it is used to support the claim that political power in America has become democratized to the point at which one can become president without being born to privilege.

Carlins Thats the problem implies that democratization, far from being an unqualified good, can lead to mediocrity or even incompetence. Wordplay is a natural part of language and is associated with riddles, puzzles, games, puns, jokes, double entendres, and even linguistic confusion (as in malapropisms). It involves viewing or treating language as an art form, as a source of entertainment. We can find it almost everywhere, including homes, schools, offices, businesses, and even public restrooms (graffiti). The advertisement and bumper sticker I NY is based on a rebus, a message involving words and pictures. A radiator repair business whose slogan is Best place in town to take a leak is also using wordplaythe pun.

Indeed, the pun, like some other forms of wordplay, has existed since ancient times. Puns, for example, are often found in Sanskrit and sometimes in Latin (as in the plays of the Roman playwright Plautus, known for making up and changing the meanings of words to create puns). Whats more, palindromes also existed in ancient times, as evidenced by the following graffito, found in the remains of the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, buried by volcanic ash: