Books: Word Salad

LANGUAGE ON VACATION by Dmitri A. Borgmann. 318 pages. Scribner. $6.95.

Subbookkeeper is the only English word that contains four successive pairs of letters. Triennially is one of the very few English words in which the odd and the even letters spell two complete words: tinily and renal. The longest English word that can be typed in the top letter line of a typewriter is—typewriter? The longest English word without an e in it is floccinaucinihilipilification (the action or habit of estimating things as worthless).

This resolutely useless information is published in one of the year’s most peculiar and fascinating books, an encyclopedia of logology assembled by a stark-raving logomaniac named Dmitri Alfred Borgmann, a Chicago actuary whose name, when its letters are transposed, spells “damn mad boring trifler.” Boring he is not. Among his offerings:

∙ TRANSPOSITIONS, says Author Borgmann, are words rearranged into other words, and he gives examples in a rising order of difficulty: harmonicas—maraschino ; microcephaly—pyrochemical; oxhearts—thoraxes. Got the idea? Then go ahead and see how many transpositions can be formed from the word angriest—Borgmann lists 65.

∙ ANAGRAMS & ANTIGRAMS, says Borgmann, are words or groups of words that can be transposed into words or groups of words that have the same or the opposite meanings. Anagrams: conversation—voices rant on; medical consultations—noted miscalculations; the nudist colony—no untidy clothes; Washington crossing the Delaware—he saw his ragged continentals row. Antigrams: evangelists—evil’s agents; the lenten season—none eat less then.

∙ PALINDROMES, as Borgmann presents them, are still more fun. Spelled the same backward as forward, they fall into several categories: palindromic words (Malayalam, evitative, detartrated); palindromic names and trade names (Mary Belle Byram, Yreka Bakery); vertical palindromes that read in reverse when they are turned upside down, either hand-printed: s w i m s

or handwritten:

chump

Best of all are the palindromic sentences (Dennis and Edna sinned; Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus; Ma is a nun as I am).

∙ WORD SURGERY, the process of creating words by eliminating letters from longer words, is epitomized in one surprising sentence: “Show this bold Prussian that praises slaughter, slaughter brings rout.” Now eliminate the first letter of each word and read what remains.

Borgmann provides an amusing section on rhopalic sentences in which each word has one letter more than the last (“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting”), and some helpful hints for the Scrabble set (aaa is a hookworm disease of ancient Egypt, and the zzxjoanw is a musical instrument). Unfortunately, he omits acrostics, telestichs, lipogrammata, univocalic verses, Richelieu’s equivoque or Swift’s “Lacerated Latin” verses, in which Latin words make English statements (“Omi de armis tres,/ Imi na dis tres./ Cantu disco ver/ Meas alo ver?”). But he does include a section on the word square, the prototype of the crossword puzzle, and tops it off with an impressive sentence square composed entirely of five-letter words.

seven young crazy maids shall smart young brave ideas moved alert males crazy ideas ruled those women often maids moved those items never aired shall alert women never voice views smart males often aired views fully

Also represented: Sotadic verses, pangrammatic rubaiyat and problems in alphametics (alphabet arithmetic). They are all wonderfully ingenious and entertaining, and so is Author Borgmann, who dazzles right down to the last word — which happens to be a palindrome: ZZZZ. But the last word really belongs to the readers, and it will doubtless be another palindrome: AHA!