I love a bit of word play and today I’ve played with homophones
I can’t help but feel that a group of engineers must have got together and felt the need to create a set of labelled boxes to sort out all of the peculiarities associated with words of the english language. What am I talking about? It’s the old homonym, homophone, heteronym, polyseme and capitonym boxes. So what does each box hold?
Homonym
- Words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings.
- left (opposite of right or depart the building)
And now the engineers get a bit tricky with a box partly in a box (the homonym box that is)…
Homophone (‘same sound’)
- Same pronunciation, different meaning and regardless of their spelling
- wine (good to drink 🙂 ) and whine (speciality skill set possessed by my children)
- to, too, two
Another box partly in the homonym box…
Homograph (‘same writing’)
- Words that share the same spelling, with a different meaning and regardless of how they are pronounced
- bat (animal or sports equipment)
And this type sits squarely inside the Homograph box…
Hetronym (‘different name’)
- Same spelling, different pronunciation and meaning
- bow BAU – front of ship and BOH weapon of choice for Robin hood and his merry men
- desert dihZURT– don’t leave just yet, we’re nearly at the end and DEZert– arid region
I think they just wanted to see if they could partly place another box inside the Homograph, introducing the…
Polyseme (‘many signs/words’)
- Same spelling and distinct but related meaning
- mouth (used to eat chocolate or the opening of a cave or river)
I think they came up with this one after a few glasses of whine… I mean wine…
Capitonym
- Same spelling but different meaning when capitalised
- march (uniform walk) and March (third month in year)
- earth (soil) and Earth (our home)
I love the English language. What peculiarities do you like about it?
And now for a few fun facts about Pi / Pie. See if you can tell which fact belongs to which one!
- March 14 is Pi/Pie day (3.14) and Albert Einstein was born on that day too.
- Pumpkin Pie/Pi was introduced to the pilgrims second Thanksgiving in 1623.
- In the Star Trek movie, Wolf in the Fold, Spock foils the evil computer by ordering it to compute to last digit the value of pi/pie. In the real world, computers can undergo a ‘digital cardiogram’ (a stress test) by computing pi/pie.
- The American Pie Council is an organization committed to preserving America’s pi/pie heritage and promoting American’s love affair with pi/pies.
- The Guinness World Records for memorising pie/pi (this practice is called piphilology) was achieved by Chao Lu, who recited pi from memory to 67,890 places. It took him 24 hours and 4 minutes with 4 years of practice.
- Pi/pie cannot be accurately represented in fraction form. Most of us know it as 22/7, but this only represents 0.00000849%. However, it would be more accurately represented with this fraction 104348/33215 (00000001056%).
What’s your Pi/Pie story?
Poor Frank, but perhaps there is one thing the two of them have in common…the love of coffee!
I admit, it’s my weakness. I can’t start the day at work without one. Even though I would like to think of myself as a coffee connoisseur, my coffee of choice shows that my palette is one of an amateur – café latte. But perhaps I shouldn’t feel too bad as I recall the man who came into my favourite coffee haunt the other day and ordered a double double espresso (no, you are not seeing double, it was his coffee that was). Noticing the look of surprise on the barista’s face, he obviously felt the need to explain. Apparently it was only the second time he had ordered one – Oh, I get it, that makes it OK… I guess.
Wiki, has an amazing list of over 53 coffee types, including some you may not be that familiar with, such as:
- Guillermo: One or two shots of hot espresso, poured over slices of lime (sounds terrible)
- Café bombón: Espresso with condensed milk, popular in Spain (I’ve tried similar in Vietnam and I must admit, a bit too sweet for me)
- Caffe Zoro: Double espresso added to hot water with a 1:1 ratio (I liked the sound of the name)
- Greek frappé: Originating in Greece in the early 1950’s, it is a foam-covered iced coffee drink made from spray-dried instant coffee.
- Red Tie: A traditional Thai iced tea, comprising of a single shot of espresso and a spicy and sweet mixture of chilled black tea, orange blossom water, star anise, crushed tamarind, sugar and condensed milk or cream (Umm, what can I say? I think I would need to try it before passing judgement)
So what’s your brew of choice? Ever tried an unusual one?
Ah, too obvious! Of course it would have to be chicken.
So why does meat often taste like chicken?…Well maybe it doesn’t. Our friends at MythBusters did a taste test of different meats to see if ‘it is easy to confuse the taste of unusual meats with that of chicken.’ They had twenty meats prepared for tasting (if you’re a vegetarian, or animal lover, skip this paragraph and read the results in the following paragraph), including: frog, peacock, squab, alligator, goat and turtle (What the…!) For the non squeamish, check out there video here.
Tory got 17 out of 20 samples correct and Grant only 11. The giveaway for Tory was the texture of the meat, so they did the test again; this time with minced meat to take away the texture. The results improved with Tory identifying 18 of 20 and Grant 19 of 20. In the words of MythBusters – Busted.
I was once tricked with goat for lamb (not happy, goat is a no go zone for me), but never chicken.
Have you ever confused another meat for chicken?
Just imagine if your in tray tripled over night – Scary thought, huh?
Office in tray management is a big thing these days and many graduates are subjected to assessment centre exercises as part of the job interview process. One of the activities tends to include the in-tray exercise where you are given a hypothetical in tray which you then have to work your way through. With no definitive right or wrong answer, the objective is to assess the candidate’s ability to prioritse, work to a time frame and effectively determine actions to handle the information.
Thank goodness they hadn’t invented this when I went for my initial job interviews, as my uni degree certainly didn’t arm me with these skill sets for when I entered the work force.
Have you ever sat one of these tests and how did you go? If you haven’t, how do you think you would go?
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The three toad sloth with extra suction
Sloths are probably the closest looking real life cartoon in existence. After drawing this cartoon, I had to do a bit more research on this wonderful mammal. Here are some things you might’t know about the humble sloth.
- They are so slow moving that algae grows on their fur – Well I joke partially, but it does help them stay camouflaged in the tree top homes.
- There are both two toed and three toed sloths, but both have long claws up to 10cm in length, which they use to grip to tree branches.
- Sloths once were as large as elephants…but that was thousands of years ago and these types have been extinct for over 10,000 years.
- It can take up to a month for a sloth to digest it’s meal. Their leaf diet is hard to break down and they rely on stomach bacteria to help the process along.
So what’s your favourite animal?
Credit Wiki Commons: Drei Finger Faultier
Talking mirrors, eh?
Well, IKEA have done exactly that with their Motivational Mirror. Their research suggested that in the UK
- 49% of the British receive no compliments in an average week
- 43.6 million people in the UK are self-critical about their appearance
- 33% of the nation feel they look their worst before 9am on a Monday morning
The solution to this issue – the talking mirror, which compliments you as you stand in front of it. Take a look at the customers’ reaction as they pass by in this You Tube video. Currently on trial in UK IKEA stores; I guess time will tell if it’s a success or not. I don’t think this one is for me, but it could be a fun way to start the day.