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.
Here is another case where two words differ in American/British meaning based on an extra E: STORY and STOREY. You can tell a STORY, it's a piece of narration or fiction, or a news story. I don't normally think of it as a verb, but it can be. I would normally say I was telling a STORY, but I could be STORYING. Having finished the STORY, I suppose I am all STORIED out. But, STORIED fits as an adjective too: if many stories have been told about you, you have lived a STORIED life. STOREY is a floor in a house, and to make matters a little more complex, in the British Isles, what we call the first floor (Am) is the ground floor and our second floor is their first storey (floor). A taller building could have multiple STOREYS. Merriam-Webster says that this STOREY is just a less common version of STORY, but it always felt to me like a specifically British version. Cambridge has STOREYED, which would be used as an adjective, as in "a three-storeyed ho...
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