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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 1, 2021 0:00:05 GMT
A Happy - and I hope better - New Year, all!
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 1, 2021 0:23:46 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 1, 2021 0:42:55 GMT
The article to which Vv referred to last month raises the question whether the plural of WOTY should be WOTYs or WOTIES. I have been amusing myself during a mainly locked down, family isolated Christmas playing with pluralising (Ugh! Horrible word!) English language nouns. Of course, the standard is simply the addition of S. Words ending with S, X, Z, CH and SH usually take ES (but loch has a simple S). Words ending with Y preceded by a consonant lose the Y and replace it with IES.
There is a host of special cases such as tooth/teeth and ox/oxen and those that simply add an E or which replace a final ON with A, but can you identify the word which takes ZES to render it in the plural?
Anyway, take care and have a safe 2021.
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 1, 2021 1:24:15 GMT
LJH: Do you mean words not having the singular ending in zes but which are pluralised by the addition of that letter trio? If so, I can't think of any. The first ~zes plural that comes to my mind is, unsurprisingly, Benzes – the plural of Mercedes (which latter I would treat as a plurale tantum as Mercedeses is just too ugly to utter), but I doubt that it fits your query.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 1, 2021 7:42:19 GMT
I think the plural of WOTY should be WsOTY!
Quiz?
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 1, 2021 7:51:48 GMT
I think the plural of WOTY should be WsOTY! Quiz? Ha! Dave :-) My mind plays those kinds of games, too. Perhaps I should have heeded others' advice and "got a life", but it's a tad late now.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 1, 2021 12:54:30 GMT
Quiz is correct! Well done! I can’t think of any other.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 1, 2021 15:57:15 GMT
The ~zes plural seems to apply when (but not always when) the singular word ends in vowel+z; words with a consonant before the vowel take just ~es:
Spritz -> Spritzes Fizz -> Fizzes Waltz -> Waltzes Quartz -> quartzes
But: Quiz -> Quizzes Fez -> Fezzes
I note that topaz breaks the rule (it's two topazes) and I've yet to decide how I'd write the plural of oyez ...
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 4, 2021 10:48:29 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 4, 2021 21:45:40 GMT
When tidying my quotations file (it's enormous) this morning I stumbled across this one, long forgotten. It's an adaptation of “To err is human; to forgive, divine”, originally from a 1711 poem by Alexander Pope titled An essay on criticism, Part II.
“To write is human, to edit is divine.” ― Stephen King, On writing: A memoir of the craft
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 5, 2021 11:22:59 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 5, 2021 16:48:05 GMT
I recently inadvertently included the letter U in the name of the Australian airline QANTAS and I have also been exploring the idea of travelling to Qatar. The two events, coming together, caused me to wonder if there are any English words where Q is not followed by U. I think QANTAS is an initialism and not truly a word and Qatar is not English (indeed the latter is a rendering of an Arabic sound into English so I wonder why we don’t write “Katar”).
I visited this website word.tips/words-with/q/without/u/ which identifies forty-seven words having a Q not followed by U but I wonder if any of them are “real” English words. The list includes qwerty as well as qwertys and qwerties* and several words which are non-standard spellings of words which are at best borrowings from languages other than English. Accepting that these are all “words”, does the fact that Scrabble judges accept a word mean that we must all accept them as English words?
So, is there an English word where Q is not followed by U? Opinions please.
*At best qwerty is surely an adjective so can’t be pluralised.
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 5, 2021 20:38:06 GMT
LJH: Not infrequently do I also automatically insert a U into Qantas; it’s an ingrained habit to follow the Q with U.
I think that these qualify as English words: • Qantas = started as an acronym of Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services; as it’s a corporate name it must be a proper noun, hence truly a word; • qwerty = acronym; I, too, doubt its plurality, because, as you say, LJH, it’s an adjective; however, if it’s an adjective it must be a word; • Esq = short form of esquire (though I’ve never heard the short form spoken); • tranq = short form of tranquilliser.
These have alternative spellings and are entirely foreign: • qi = chi; • qat = khat; • qabala = kabbalah.
In those last two, the q (or its alternatives k / kh) have an aspirated guttural sound not native to English (though perhaps Scots might recognise the sound as the ch in loch and northern Germans their ch) and are found in middle-Eastern tongues.
I found it curious that the WordTips site didn’t give definitions for quite a few entries. One of my house rules for Scrabble is that, if questioned or challenged, a player must be able to supply a definition for any word they’ve used. As proper nouns don't qualify in Scrabble, we can eliminate Qantas. (Over the years there have been numerous changes to the rules and acceptable-word lists, and I'm not up to date on the game.) Esq can also be eliminated for Scrabble purposes as it always (AFAIK) carries an initial cap (it's a title).
The most interesting word I've learned from Scrabble was courtesy of my late (and unlamented) mother-in-law: quim. Although M-i-L was a prude and would never use quim in daily life, she was a Scrabble fanatic (and the only person whom I've played but never beaten at the game).
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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 5, 2021 20:46:48 GMT
>. At best qwerty is surely an adjective so can’t be pluralised. <
True, but adjectives move on to take up lives as nouns. How else could we watch a video or use a mobile? Videos and mobiles certainly exist in the plural. A qwerty, or several qwertys, would perhaps pop up in a conversation about typewriters. We can imagine a keen typewriter collector entering a museum and being told that the qwertys are over there, the qwertzes on the upper floor and the azertys in the basement.
I (who have caught a bad case of “typewriter” during lockdown) now have eleven in my collection, but I collect only qwertys, as my - typically abysmal - standard of typing would get only worse if I had to fight with any layout that was even less familiar to me.
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 5, 2021 21:04:37 GMT
Interesting, Dave – but are there any three-wheelers, or is any of them a Mercedes? (Okay, the latter is QWERTZ, so perhaps not for your collection.) I had considered the notion of "a qwerty" (noun) but thought it a tad far-fetched. Perhaps not so.
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