h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This has been around for a while but deserves another airing.

Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning.

A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.



You think English is easy??

I think a retired English teacher was bored...THIS IS GREAT!

Read all the way to the end.................
This took a lot of work to put together!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture..


5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.


6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.



8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.


9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.


10) I did not object to the object.



11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.


13) They were too close to the door to close it.


14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.



15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.


16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.


18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.


20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.


And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?


If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.


English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.


PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?


You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.


There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?
Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends.
And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.
People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.
It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP,
for now my time is UP,
so.......it is time to shut UP!
Now it's UP to you what you do with this email

I recently learned that pine cones, were originally called pineapples. When pineapples were discovered, they were thus named for the resemblance, then later, the term pine cone was coined to replace the name of the original.


This reminds me of a completely story about a Scottish sailor who wanted to get a tattoo while on shore leave. He was somewhere in the
South Pacific, possibly near New Zealand. Anyway, the local tattoo artist was well known for his talent. The Scot asked him for a large tattoo of a thistle on his back in honor of his country. The tattooist, of Japanese descent, didn't know what a thistle was and also had a hard time even repeating the word. "Whistle?... What?" so the Scot tried describing it and even tried drawing a rough sketch. Finally, the tattooist assured him he understood and spent the next few hours, meticulously inking the Scottish sailor.

When he got back on board his ship, he showed it off for his shipmates. They were a bit puzzled and asked him why he had a huge pineapple on his back?

Funny.

It's at times like this that I wish I could remember to write down absolutely everything I hear every day no matter what because I never know when I'm going to need it

Okay, well not everything, but definitely the interesting stuff.

I was listening to something within the past week but I doubt I'd be able to find it again. Someone constructed a sentence with eight different ways of pronouncing '-ough', including one or two I hadn't considered, like hiccough - meaning 'hiccup' (there's 'up' again )

All the obvious ones of course - cough, through, bough, thorough, dough, tough... and hiccough makes seven. What have I missed?

I saw this (via reddit) the other day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ucCJ_Vn58w

morning all

just tried to read it all, but i can't

i broke me glasses






slightly blurred RJR

Gosho... I believe your missing word is "slough".

http://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem2.html

No, I don't think that's it. It can be pronounced slough (to rhyme with bough) as in the town where The Office was set and John Betjeman's poem "Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough", or slough (to rhyme with tough or through, depending on your background and nationality), as in 'I'm in a slough of despond'.

I also a variation of that poem (or at least the first stanza) that replaced it with "lough". I have no idea how to pronounce that or what it means.

I also accidentally a word.

That's the one! Lough, the Irish spelling of Scottish 'loch'

It's like taking off tight shoughs

The tough coughs as he ploughs the dough... but that's only 4...

Oh dear, why did I start to learn English now?!

Oh, Hypatia, I am dame up that you have given us this gem. I must read up on more of the quirks of the English language.

Isn't it strange though, that English is spoken world wide in spite of being such a puzzle yet most English speaking people can't be bothered to learn another language?

I have always loved words and reading and writing nd have got a great deal of pleasure from teaching my three year old granddaughter new words which she seems to delight in. I look forward to sharing my love of it once she really starts to read.

You are never truly alone if you have a good book to hand.

Thanks again for such a gem.

Websailor

At Christmas we make mince pies, which are really fruit pies as they contain mincemeat, which isn't really meat at all.

... Then, we have mince pies made with mince, but not with mincemeat, these are savoury pies... I think


lil x

Very amusing Hyp. Thanks for sharing that.

YB