Word Idioms

Several words have found themselves used in a number of phrases. We looked at 'hit' last time and this time it's 'word'

Have words with first appears in a 15th century document.

Word to the wise is a translation of a Latin phrase, where verbum sapienti satis est meant 'a word to the wise is enough'.

Word for word is another of some age, appearing in the 14th century.

Word of mouth, once again, has some longevity and appears in writing for the first time in the 1550s. It would be good to know if the first time this expression, it speaking of an oral communication, appeared in writing the irony was not lost on the writer.

Swear word is obviously a combination of two simple and early English words. However, we do not find them in combination until 1873, when it is used in an America.

Crossword is another combining two much older words, and does not appear until 1925 when it is given as a 'crossword puzzle'. The first crossword in New York World newspaper on 21 December 1913, but was described as a 'word-cross'.

Homographs

A homograph is defined as a word which has more than one meaning. Perhaps this should be explained further as there are some words which share a spelling – bow and wind, for example – but have different pronunciations as well as meaning. Here we are looking at the same spelling and different meanings. For crossword compilers (and solvers) such words are invaluable when trying to fill that five-letter space. Using the alternate definition when the word is clearly used in the other context can prove a minor distraction.

Bat – Every night untold millions of insects are killed by bats.

Bear – Bear watching bear baiting

Brace – A brace of pheasant will help support a family.

Can – Can factories can

Clear – Clear balls on a snooker table.

Conduct – Conductor attracts in electrical performance.

Down – Get down from that duck!

Lead – The vicar took the lead.

Quarry – The old man finally managed to bag his quarry.

Rock – Fred Flintstone’s music collection was all rock.

Spirit – Brandy was the epitome of spirit in the school

Wave – The hairdresser put a wave in my hair.

Crossword Clues

Producing a cryptic crossword recently (or rather finishing one I'd started years ago) meant playing around with possible anagrams to produce clues. I soon found my mind wandering and before long I'd produced a selection of anagrams of famous names. I repeat some of them, it is not intended to be a test but I have split them for those who like a challenge.

First the anagrams, the answers appear below

A MAN DIVORCED
MY JERKY EEL
INKS OOZY RASCAL
SO INBORN, JOSH
WINKIE BABOON
ANODISE NINJA
HARD ADVERT
AIMED BLIND
MO WINS CELLO
LOCH CELERY
TROTH PRAYER
VILE SPY LEERS
CRY UM PLACENTA
FERN THE SPY
STRANGLE MINOR
ONION BANNERS
YON CALMER JERKS
SODDEN MELON
APISH LION
DARN CRAB RHINOS

As I said not a test but an indication of how many potential words can be made from just 26 letters of the alphabet. Clearly the shortest words contain but one letter, 'I' is a word as is 'a'.
I once overheard a conversation at the bank in which the customer used the letter 'o' as a word. And if we were to accept the apostrophe as replacing two letters then 'o' would count. Incidentally this word 'o' was the answer to the question: "How was your holiday in Spain?" to which the woman replied "Oh, ya know, 'o' " - this last word saw her drop the first 'h' and, courtesy of the abysmal glottal stop, omit the final 't'. Hence the weather was 'hot' or as she put it 'o'.
But I digress. If a one-letter word can be any of the 26 letters then there are just 26 different potential words of one letter. Today 'q' isn't a word, neither is 'k', and although 'j' is a name (correctly a nickname) it isn't a word. Yet that does not mean it may not be a word in the future and the idea is to discover potential word numbers not actual word numbers. For two letter words this is 26 x 26, for three 26 x 26 x 26, four it's 26 x 26 x 26 x 26, etc. So, the number of letters in the alphabet (26) raised to the power of number of letters in the word. This gives the following:

one-letter words = 26
two-letter words = 676
three-letter words = 15,576
four-letter words = 456,976
five-letter words = 11,881,376
six-letter words = 308,915,776
seven-letter words = 8,031,810,176
eight-letter words = 208,827,064,576
Or a grand total of 217,180,145,158
I stop at eight letters (otherwise it gets ludicrous)

To give an indication of how mind-blowing amazingly big this number is, if you were to watch a clock counting to 217,180,145,158 in seconds and it started at 00:00 on 1st January 1 AD, aside from being incredibly bored (this assuming you retain memories for longer than one second otherwise you'll be excited 217,180,145,158 times), you wouldn't even be halfway there today, in fact you'd still be sitting there on 7th January 6883.
That is, as I'm sure you will agree, a lot of words. (Henceforth I shall claim all my typographical errors to be words I will invent sometime in the future)

The anagram answers (if you're still interested):

A MAN DIVORCED - David Cameron
MY JERKY EEL - Jeremy Kyle
INKS OOZY RASCAL - Nicolas Sarkozy
SO INBORN, JOSH - Boris Johnson
WINKIE BABOON - Obiwan Kenobi
ANODISE NINJA - Indiana Jones
HARD ADVERT - Darth Vader
AIMED BLIND - Ed Miliband
MO WINS CELLO - Simon Cowell
LOCH CELERY - Cheryl Cole
TROTH PRAYER - Harry Potter
VILE SPY LEERS - Elvis Presley
CRY UM PLACENTA - Paul McCartney
FERN THE SPY - Stephen Fry
STRANGLE MINOR - Neil Armstrong
ONION BANNERS - Anne Robinson
YON CALMER JERKS - Jeremy Clarkson
SODDEN MELON - Noel Edmonds
APISH LION - Ian Hislop
DARN RHINO CRABS - Richard Branson