Richard Lederer - The Play of Words: Fun & Games for Language Lovers

RICHARD LEDERER
Illustrations by Bernie Cootner

Pocket Books
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DO NOT MISS THE ENTERTAINING ANTICS OF BESTSELLING AUTHOR RICHARD LEDERER

FRACTURED ENGLISH

THE WRITE WAY A Guide to Real-Life Writing

ADVENTURES OF A VERBIVORE

THE MIRACLE OF LANGUAGE

THE PLAY OF WORDS Fun & Games for Language Lovers

Available from Pocket Books

THE PLAY OF WORDS

Do you know the connection between the expression a harrowing experience and agriculture, between by and large and sailing, between get your goat and horses, or between steal your thunder and show business? You probably have heard the comparisons happy as a clam, smart as a whip, pleased as punch, dead as a doornailbut have you ever wondered why a clam should be happy, a whip smart, punch pleased, and a doornail dead?

By playing the fifty games in this book, youll discover the answers to these questions as well as hundreds of other semantic delights that repose in our marvelous English language.

from the Introduction to The Play of Words

Other Books by Richard Lederer

Pun and Games

The Write Way (with Richard Dowis)

Nothing Risqu, Nothing Gained

Literary Trivia (with Michael Gilleland)

Adventures of a Verbivore

More Anguished English

The Miracle of Language

The Play of Words

Crazy English

Get Thee to a Punnery

Anguished English

Basic Verbal Skills (with Philip Burnham)

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The Clam from Everyone but Thee and Me by Ogden Nash. Copyright 1962 by Ogden Nash; copyright renewed 1986 by Frances Nash, Isabel Nash Eberstadt and Linnell Nash Smith. Used by permission of Little, Brown & Company.

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright 1990 by Richard Lederer

Illustrations copyright 1990 by Bernie Cootner

Cover design by Jon Valk

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Lederer, Richard, 1938

The play of words : fun and games for language lovers / Richard Lederer : illustrations by Bernie Cootner.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-6716-8909-4

eISBN: 978-1-4391-3896-0

1. English languageEtymologyProblems, exercises, etc. 2. Word games. I. Title.

PE1574.L37 1990

422dc20 91-15977

CIP

First Pocket Books trade paperback printing September 1991

Design: Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics Co. Inc.

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

To all the games people in my lifemy tennis buddies, my card buddies, and my word buddies

www.SimonandSchuster.com

INTRODUCTION

Do you know the connection between the expression a harrowing experience and agriculture, between by and large and sailing, between get your goat and horses, or between steal your thunder and show business? You probably have heard the comparisons happy as a clam, smart as a whip, pleased as punch, and dead as a doornailbut have you ever wondered why a clam should be happy, a whip smart, punch pleased, or a doornail dead?

By playing the fifty games in this book, youll discover the answers to these questions as well as hundreds of other semantic delights that repose in our marvelous English language. I wont make you comb through scabrous thickets of jumbled letters to extract hidden words just for the sake of passing time. Instead, youll learn a lot from these mind-opening gamesand have a lot of fun learning. During my nearly three decades as a high school English teacher I have found that enjoyment and instruction are inspiring team teachers.

Any games book worth its salt (another phrase that you will find in the pages that follow) contains challenges of varying degrees of difficulty. The Play of Words is arranged to provide you with a varied and vigorous regimen of calisthenics for the mind. Some of the questions you will be able to answer right away; others, by design, are impossible for all but the most pyrotechnic of geniuses. In many cases, a poser may stump you the first time around, but insights will come to you in sudden flashes as you return to the game a second or third time. When you are sure that you have reached your limit, turn to the answers, which appear conveniently at the end of each section.

You can play all the games within a period of a week or two or string them out, one a week, over the course of nearly a year. You can play them solo or in groups or teams. The rules to each game are simple, and you need no more costly equipment than pencil and paper. You may write directly in this book, or you may want to keep these pages pristine and free of hints, so as to share these linguistic adventures with your family and friends.

I thank my publishers for their suggestion that I create a book of word games and my editor, Stacy Schiff, for the loving care with which she helped to make the material clear, correct, and attractive. Versions of some of the games in this book have appeared in Writing!, Words Ways, and Verbatim.

RICHARD LEDERER

Concord, New Hampshire

I

METAPHORS

Language is fossil poetry which is constantly being worked over for the uses of speech. Our commonest words are worn-out metaphors.

JAMES BRADSTREET GREENOUGH AND GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

CONTENTS

I
METAPHORS

II
CLICHS

III
SOUND