In word games, it often makes sense to start with a small word and look for progressively longer words with the same letters. Here is on that was bouncing around in my head this weekend.
SOL is the sun, the center of the SOLAR System.
SOLE is either the only item, or a fish. Of course, acting as the SOLE participant means going SOLO. This can also apply to a musical part, where you break off from the rest of the band and do your own thing: playing a SOLO.
From SOLE we can insert a V to get SOLVE. This word has some interesting branches. It could mean coming up with the answer to a problem, SOLVING the problem. That answer is the SOLUTION.
What's interesting about SOLVE and SOLUTION is that they also applies to mixing something into a liquid. You DISSOLVE salt into water, for example, in which case the salt (the SOLUTE) is SOLUBLE in the water (the SOLVENT), and the resulting mix is the SOLUTION.
This just feels like an odd parallel: finding an answer and mixing chemicals. I suppose in the days of early chemistry, there were thousands of problems to figure out concerning how different compounds will mix or not mix. In fact, each compound can be dissolved into some quantity of each solvent, giving the SOLUBILITY of X into Y. And this varies with temperate and pressure. There used to be whole thick books of just solubility curves for industrial research.
Quick note: SOL is not related to SOLACE, which comes more from CONSOLE, as in to console someone.
There is a certain amount of linguistic Zen that comes from playing simple word unscrambler games, spinning around the question of why some words are accepted and others are not. A few nights back we played UNRULY, and for fun, I tried RULY on a whim, and the game accepted it, when I know other games have rejected it. I tried explaining it to Anne. It felt like a word to me, and it's in Merriam-Webster with the same example I thought of at the time: "I have seen some ruly crowds." It turns out that MW has a fascinating story about these two words, see here . "Ruly" did exist for centuries, got replaced by UNRULY, only to come back as a back-formation from UNRULY to fill the gap it once filled. It turns out that these cases are considered "Lost positives", words where the positive root word has faded from usage while the negation of the word is still going strong. Here is a video from RobWords that gives a good overview. I have been enjoy...
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