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The Monday Morning Memo

“I don’t think we should organize a society around the sensibilities of the most easily upset people because then you have a very neurotic society… The main thing is to realize that words depend on their context. Very literal-minded people think a word is a word but it isn’t.”

– John Cleese,
Sept. 5, 2020

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Download the PDF "Dictionary of the Cognoscenti of Wizard Academy"

Random Quote:

“Ever wonder why we say tick-tock, not tock-tick, or ding-dong, not dong-ding: King Kong, not Kong King?

Turns out it is one of the unwritten rules of English that native speakers know without knowing.

The rule, explained in a BBC article, is: “If there are three words then the order must always be I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O. Mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic-tac, sing-song, ding-dong, King Kong, ping-pong.”

There is another unwritten rule at work in the name Little Red Riding Hood.

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in the order, opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose-noun. So you have ‘a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.’ But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.

That explains why we say ‘little green men,’ not ‘green little men.’ But ‘Big Bad Wolf’ sounds like a gross violation of the opinion (bad)-size (big)-noun (wolf) order. But not if you recall the first rule about the I-A-O order.

That rule seems inviolable: all four of a horse’s feet make exactly the same sound. But we always say clip-clop, never clop-clip.

This rule even has a technical name —the rule of ablaut reduplication—but life is simpler knowing that we know the rule without knowing it.

Play It By Ear: If a word sequence sounds wrong, it is probably wrong.”

- BBC

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