WordFixx

This will be another quick case of extending a word by adding letters progressively.  I like how this batch crosses a variety of sciences: An ION is any atom with a charge due to having excess or missing electrons.  If missing an electron, it will be a positive ion.  If it has an extra electron to share, it will be a negative ion.  Table salt is made up of a positive sodium (Na+) and a negative chlorine (Cl-) ion.  (In the simplest form, or when in solution in water.)  That is basic chemistry. Now a PION is a subatomic particle, coming from physics.  The name is shortened from pi-meson.  The exact nature of this particle can be found here .  For our purposes, it's just a useful word to know in Scrabble or other games. Next in line is the PRION, which comes from biology .  Believe it or not, there are infectious particles that are smaller than bacteria, even smaller than viruses ... PRIONS are simply misfolded mutant proteins that can cau...

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...

As I came to see DEUCE and DUCE more frequently in the word games we play, I thought they were just two spellings of the same word -- maybe one was American English and the other was British -- but they are not even close.  A DEUCE is a two, or specifically the face of a die that shows two spots.  It does not seem to apply generally to a pair of something, as you would never say a deuce of shoes or a deuce of daisies.   Another set of expressions uses "deuce" as the devil, as in "there's the deuce to pay," suggesting a lot of trouble is coming.  I have also heard, "to the deuce with you."  Deuce = Devil in these cases. A less common usage is for "deuce" to mean something remarkable, as in "a deuce of a situation."  Merriam Webster's definition 3b is: "something notable of its kind", and their example is: "a deuce of a mess."  This fits with deuce as the devil.  It's not unheard of to say "a devil of ...

Talking about family quirks, Anne came up with another interesting phrase.  She says her sister from Wisconsin says "a horse a piece" meaning "either way".  So it would be the equivalent of "six of one, half dozen of the other".   The first long explanation I saw for this was at Everything Summer Camp . It comes from a situation in a game where a player is trying to win a best-of-three match and each player has one win, so "one win apiece" eases into "a horse apiece".  This feels most likely to me. I can see a link back to a friendly (or not so friendly) game of bar dice where, in the final best-of-three showdown, if you lose the first game, it's "a horse against you" or "a horse on you", after which, if the other player wins the second game, you would clearly have "a horse apiece."   A lot of gambling games have the tokens or stakes nicknamed "horses". There's a bit of a time shift going...

Anne just mentioned a few interesting quirky phrases she and her sisters use. One is "bread and butter", used when two people are walking together and some obstacle comes up that will separate them -- just say "bread and butter" and it will be okay.  This would fall under phrases of superstition.  It's an incantation of sorts.  The idea is that bread and butter cannot be separated easily, so the two people walking will be safe from any misfortune.  In some reports, both people have to say it for it to have the desired effect. I had never heard of this usage, but I'm sure I have heard similar things, like "step on a crack, break your father's back," meant to keep quirky influences away. She says she has used it most of her life, and still thinks it in her head sometimes when a lamp post or some other obstacle comes up.  Wikipedia mentions it , without much history. Hours later: Just now, we took a trip to target to buy some new sizes of luggage ...

I was contemplating how many odd short words that I use are the names of fish, so I thought I would put together a list.  Common short fish names for word games (less than 8 letters), from this Wikipedia page . I can't say these will all be accepted by every game or dictionary, but they are worth knowing to expand your word power.  Some are familiar to local areas, where others are widely known around the world.  There are variations on some of these, and compound names (yellowfin tuna, sailfin silverside, etc), and many longer names.  There are also thousands of genus names for fish (like alosa, which includes shads, alewife and a herring or two) but it's hard to say how many of those are ever used on their own.   alewife + anchovy *+ ayu % bangus % barb +- barbel + barfish % bass *+- basslet % batfish + betta + bichir % bigeye blenny + boafish % boga % bonito + bowfin boxfish bream + brill brotula % burbot buri % candiru % capelin carp + catfish *+ catla % cha...

An interesting article came up today on phys.org about how new words reach the mainstream (or fail to do so) from social media. The basic premise: "Language evolves within a social context and variations in a language are always in competition with each other. In everyday language, words are constantly being created, but not all these words persist." The examples are French words, but the data should apply to any language.  A well-placed creator at the center of a large network is more likely to get a new word across the finish line to acceptability, compared to people on the fringes using it.  No surprise here, but it was interesting to see the charts and how they broke down the analysis.  They saw three windows of 6 to 18 months each, where the word is trending, then peaking, and after that it either stays at the peak or falls back into obscurity. This wasn't based on just asking a few people.  The team analyzed "650 million tweets written in French between 2012 a...