Facebook Quizzzes 101-150

Facebook Quizzes-101-150

101-What do these words have in common?-job, nice, polish, reading, tangier

102-What do these words have in common?-coach, goulash, hussar, paprika

103-What tennis player's names are anagrams to “nail” & “grass an aide”?

104-Name a city in N. Africa that is an anagram for a nickname for a US state.

105- What tennis player's name is an anagram to “Me, thin man”?

106-What do these words have in common? amok,bamboo,compound

107-What tennis player's name is an anagram to “Hi June tennis”?

108-What do these words have in common? abrade,Aryans, glanced, Italian, Rwandan pearly

109-Name a tennis player whose name is an anagram to a former QB.

110-Name a color that is an anagram to an animal.

111-Name a former US Open champion whose name is comprised only of 1 pt letters in Scrabble.

112-Name a word of at least 10 letters comprised only of letters in first half of alphabet.

113-Name 2 tennis players whose surnames are palindromes.

114-Name a food of 7letters made up of letters in the first half of the alphabet.

115-Name a former tennis champion whose name featured only 1 vowel.

116-Name a 7 lettered word with 5 vowels.

117-What tennis player's name is an anagram to “server itch”?

118-What do these words have in common?escalator thermos aspirin plexiglass zipper t

119-What do these words have in common? infest-flow-barfed--wafer-confer

120-Name 2 animals of at least 6 letters comprised of only odd letters in the alphabet . e.g. A=1 C=3

121-What former political leader's name is an anagram to “That great charmer”? -

122- What do these words have in common?-abducted bewilder crashing feverish

123-What is the only number in reverse alpabetical order?

124- Name a singer whose name is an anagram to “Presbyterians”

125-Name cities that feature only oe repeating vowel for a. e.i. O & u

126-What do these surnames have in common? Blanchard-Bouchard-Beliveau-Broderick

127-Name a country of at least ten letters where no letters repeat themselves?

128-Name a city in Massachusetts that is an anagram to an animal.

129-Name a country that is an anagram to a dance.

130-Name an Asian city that is an anagram to a part of the body.

131-Name a former political leader whose surname is an anagram to a part of the body.

132-Name a western US city that is an anagram to a nicjkname for a pro sports team.

133- Name a Canadian city other than Toronto where every letter is worth 1 point in Scrabble.

134- Name a European city of 1million where every letter is worth 1 point in Scrabble.

135 – Nme 2 animals of at least 7 letters where every letter is in first half of alphabet.

136-Name a term for an animal of 5 letters where every letter appears in second half of alphabet.

137 -What US city can you make from “law”?

138- Name a car, a tennis player & tree composed only of Roman numerals.

139-Name a Us state & its capital that end in the same 2 letters.

140-Name the husband of a first lady where every letter in name is worth 1 pt in Scrabble.

141-What do all the letters in this sentence have in common?-A big, bad imbecilic bald-headed Black medical academic blackmailed a mild, amicable middle-aged deaf Micmac milkmaid.

142-Name 2 European cities made up only of letters in second half of alphabet.

143-Name a word of at least 5 letters that is a palindrome and made up only of Roman numerals.

144-What geographic significance do the words “nest” and “lions”have?

145- What do these words have in common?--plea-coma-duma , alight

146-What film star's name is an anagram to “So I'm cuter”?

147-What do these words have in common?-plunge,shawarma.college,deliverance

148-What film star's name is an anagram to “costumier”?

149-Name a country that is an anagram of a word that is a synonym to a word that is a homophone to a number.?

150-What musician's name is an anagram to “retrogradely”?

Bespoke Crosses the Pond

(The following article appeared in  the October Lexpert under the title "Bespoke" Crosses the Pond.)

               

 

Translating English English into regular English

by

Howard Richler

“England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”(George Bernard Shaw)

Pshaw Mr. Shaw! Exaggerating the differences between British and North American English has been a time-honoured convention. In 1789, lexicographer Noah Webster predicted that over British English and North American English would diverge to a point that they became as different as Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from German or from each other. Clearly, this fear has not materialized.

Because my life-partner hails from Yorkshire, I am used to hearing her being “peckish” rather than “hungry,” “she wears “jumpers” not “sweaters,” uses “bins” and “flannels” instead of “garbage cans,” and “washcloths” and gets pricked by “flu jabs” not “flu shots.” Also, our bathrooms contain “loo rolls” not “toilet paper.”

On a recent trip to the United Kingdom, however, I was surprised by the number of words and expressions that left me befuddled. I asked someone in London where I could find an ATM. She looked nonplussed but her companion translated, “he means a “hole-in-the-wall.” Often my non-comprehension would occur upon espying commercial signs. For example, I was perplexed on seeing a sign announcing “bespoke industrial units” and another advertising “bespoke shoes.” I got a clearer idea when I saw another sign that read “bespoke tailors.” The OED defines bespoke as “ordered to be made, as distinguished from ready-made.” By the way, ready-made clothes in the UK are not referred to as “off the rack” but rather as “off the peg.” Some other British-sounding usages I noticed were the pompous (if not oxymoronic) sign in York that advertised “purveyor of fine fish & chips,” and the announcement on the Tube to “alight for Buckingham Palace.”

Reading British newspapers introduced me to some new terms. I spotted many newspaper usages of the word “laddish,” an adjective used to describe testosterone-addled males. Here are three examples: “The laddish letters of Kingsley Amis”; a pop music impresario described as “defiantly laddish and magnificently queenly”; and a denunciation of the “laddish attitudes ingrained in footballers from youth.”

Another unfamiliar word to me was “swot” which performed double duty as a noun and a verb in British dailies: “Any swot lucky enough to be blessed with BBC Choice can tonight experience ‘an evening of programmes dedicated to one of the greatest singer-songwriters and one of the most influential political artists of modern times’.”, and “I wanted to swot up on rock history.” The OED defines swot(v) as “to work or study at school” and swot(n) as “one who studies hard”. In colloquial use as a noun, it seems to be used most often as a synonym for “nerd.” The OED quotes one theory that the term was originated by the following terse comment by Scottish Professor of Mathematics William Wallace while employed at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, England: “It mades one swot”= (sweat).

British terms can be more picturesque than their counterparts in North America. A good example, is our inelegant “speed bump” which is often rendered in British English as “sleeping policeman.” that is a direct translation of the French gendarme couché.

Speaking of French, when dining in British restaurants or pubs, you might get the impression that the Normans had re-seized power. “Eggplant” and “zucchini” are supplanted respectively in England by “aubergine” and “courgettes,” and a Brit is more likely to wipe egg off his face with a “serviette,” rather than a “napkin.” Other menu items A North American might not be familiar with are “bangers” (sausages) and “bubble and squeak.” This dish originally contained beef along with the left-over cooked potatoes and cabbage, though today people don't generally bother with the meat. The name is apparently due to the sounds that are emitted during cooking, the vegetables bubble as they are boiled and then squeak in the frying pan.

Judging by the words on menus, you might be loath to order some pub grub fare, so let me deconstruct their meanings. “Faggots” is a type of meatball made with pork and beef liver, and “toad in the hole” consists of suusagesin Yorkshire pudding batter usually served with vegetables and gravy. Then there is the dish that sounds like a venereal disease- “spotted dick.” It is actually a pudding dessert consisting of a suet-based sponge cake and fruit such as raisins or currants.

Cheers.

Howard Richler’s latest book is Can I Have a Word With You?

phobias

Howard Richler: Don’t read this if you have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

By The Senior Times ⋅ October 10, 2012 ⋅Post a comment

Filed Under fear, Howard Richler, phobias, Word Nerd, words

Four score years ago, minus one, Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared: “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”
Well, it appears Roosevelt was wrong. The site phobialist.com lists more than 500 phobias that might plague someone. Some aren’t widespread, such as cherophobia, the fear of gaiety; leukophobia, the fear of the colour white; geniophobia, the fear of chins; and genuphobia, the fear of knees. Moreover, one suspects that with a fear like arachibutyrophobia, the fear that peanut butter will adhere to the root of your mouth, and hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, the fear of long words, there is more neology at play than psychology.
Years ago I was convinced that my wheaten terrier suffered from automatonophobia because he once barked at a scarecrow. The aforementioned list defines this condition as “the fear of ventriloquist dummies, wax statues, anything that falsely represents a sentient being.”
I was made aware of this condition thanks to an article I had just read in Time magazine about phobias. This article also highlighted a woman who wore rubber-soled shoes when opening a refrigerator and in the event of a lightbulb not functioning would wait hours for someone to change it for her. Nor could she shop for clothes lest static on garments impel her to run screaming from a shop.
Also swimming at night was out of the question, lest underwater lights electrocute her. This woman suffered from electrophobia, the morbid fear of electricity; phobialist.com lists it before eleutherophobia, fear of freedom, and after eisoptrophobia, the fearing of mirrors, or seeing oneself in a mirror.
Fears may have a flip side. If you possess uranophobia you’re afraid of heaven—hadephobia, your aversion is hell. Calignephobia denotes a fear of beautiful women and cacophobia, a fear of ugliness. If you’re afraid of all your relatives, you have syngenesophobia. If you’re afraid of your mother-in-law, you have pentheraphobia; if both your in-laws terrify you, your condition is called soceraphobia. Medomalacuphobia is the fear of losing an erection, medorthophobia is the fear of an erect penis while ithyphallophobia is the fear of seeing, thinking about, or having an erect penis. Who knew?
Many of the phobias listed are recorded in the OED, including aerophobia, fear of drafts; bogyphobia, fear of bogeymen; coprophobia, fear of feces; deipnophobia, fear of dining; siderodromophobia, fear of rail travel; tæniiphobia, fear of tapeworm; and triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13. If you suffer from papaphobia, the OED relates that you possess a “distempered dread of the pope or popery.”
Xenophobia is the fear of foreign people. One can, not suprisingly given the plethora of phobias, specify which particular group freaks you out. Some examples are Bolshe (Bolsheviks), Franco or Gallo (French), Judeo (Jews), Sino (Chinese), Teuto or Germano (German) and Waloon (Waloons), French-speaking people living in southern Belgium).
However, if you are afflicted with Hellenologophobia, you are not afraid of Greeks, but of Greek terms or complicated scientific terminology. Just recently, after Canadian diplomats at the United Nations walked out when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech, the Iranian leader accused Canada of “Iranophobia.” This coinage, however, has not yet been approved by the OED.
Seemingly any animal can make someone cringe: bird (ornithophobia), cat (ailurophobia), chicken (alektorophobia), fish (ichthyophobia), frogs (ranidaphobia), horse (equinophobia), otter (lutraphobia), shellfish (ostraconophobia), toad (bufonophobia) and wasp (spheksophobia).
The word and suffix phobia comes from the Greek phobos, “fear.” Phobos was the son of the Greek god of war Ares. When he accompanied Dad into battle, Phobos had the affect of instilling fear in all whom he encountered. The first citation of “phobia” in the OED is in 1786: “I shall begin by defining Phobia … to be a fear of an imaginary evil, or an undue fear of a real one.”
Samuel Coleridge is credited with the next citation in a letter he wrote in 1801 in which he employed a facetious usage: “I have a perfect phobia of inns and coffee-houses.”
Roosevelt was right about one thing. We must fear fear itself. This is listed as phobophobia—the fear of fear itself.
hrichler@gmail.com
Howard Richler’s next book, From Happy to Homosexual and other mysterious semantic shifts, will be published next spring.