Cassowary Crossing

Column 8 occupies the back page of Section 1 in the Sydney Morning Herald, and most weeks language occupies Column 8. (Always worth a regular surf to see what verbal quirk is on the agenda.) This week the topic was the tragic irony of DYSLEXIA, surely one of the trickier afflictions to spell.

Then came STUTTER - no picnic to pronounce for the lingually challenged. Or LISP – ditto.

The time felt right to pass on this website’s Brainstorm findings – a pick of our better [and more printable] autologues, those words that partway describe themselves, providing a batch to Column 8 yesterday, including mispelt, level, four, abbrev and ampers&.

Only for the issue to presevere in Friday’s paper, as appearing below, finishing with a cosy suggestion:

Now, to the thorny matter of self-descriptive autologues, raised here by the menacing DA yesterday. S. J. Lovemore, linguistic menace of Lane Cove, asks whether the collective noun for editors, a ”correction”, is an autologue. We are unsure, but are even less sure about his next question. ”Let us consider the antonym of autologue, the antilogue, the word ‘monosyllable’ being a case in point. This raises the question, is ‘antilogue’ an autologue? If so …” and so it went on, until we felt the need for a good lie down, which brings us to the fine autologue offered by Elouise Casey of Willoughby: ”Let’s not forget that the word ‘bed’ looks like a bed.”

Hmmmm, antilogues…. Monosyllabic is obviously a pin-up, but there must be a few more. Infinitesimal? Ineffable? upper case? Not a Brainstorm as such, but a shallow think tank. Can we make a tidy ten?

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