“Words are everywhere,” the man on the dock told me.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” I said. Of course he was right. Every day we see words in print and on our computers and hear them from everybody around us. But then I realized there was even more to the pervasiveness of words — they can even be found hiding in other words.
For example, there’s this thing called concatenation, which is when a group of things are linked together, including, sometimes, words. A simple example would be the joining of “air” and “plane” to form a new word and concept: “airplane.” These days though, the term is far more frequently used to describe a linking process within computer programming and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, so let’s move on.
Similar to concatenated words are portmanteau words (similar in my mind, at least). Opening into two parts, like a portmanteau suitcase, portmanteau words combine the sounds and meanings of the words that make them up. The next time you say, “Let’s skip brunch today because there’s too much smog,” (you do say that, don’t you?), you’ll be making use of a pair of portmanteau words. (Brunch: breakfast/lunch; and smog: smoke/fog.) Some other examples of portmanteaus are: Webisode, contrail, blog, netiquette and threepeat.
Reversible words are compound words that can have their root words switched around. You could keep your houseboat at the boathouse, for example, or maybe be upset that you were the victim of a setup while doing housework at the workhouse.
Some words can be broken into two words if you use the last letter of the first word as the first letter of the second word, such as “bother” becoming “both” and “her,” “mistake” becoming “mist” and “take,” and “portable” yielding “port” and “table.”
Words can shrink by one letter and still be words, such as: Startling, starting, staring, string, sting, sing, sin, in and I. Or they can contain several other words, for example, “therein” contains a dozen smaller words: The, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, er, in and herein.
To me, the most fun words are kangaroo words, which are words that contain the letters of one of its synonyms (called a “joey word”), arranged so that the letters appear in the same order in both words.
The joey of “accustomed” is “used,” while “astound” carries “stun” in its pouch. “Destruction” can give birth to “ruin,” while “sad” and “can” are the respective offspring of “dismayed” and “cancel.”
“Can” and “tin” are both joeys of “container,” which makes it a twin kangaroo word. Some other twins are: Community (county and city); diminutive (minute and mini); and feasted (fed and ate).
And then, proving that word geeks know no limits, there’s the Russian nesting doll of kangaroo words: the grand kangaroo word. According to kangaroowords.com, it “has two joeys, one of which is in the pouch of the other.”
For example, “alone” is the parent of “lone” and the grandparent of “one.” Also grand are: Complaisant (compliant and pliant); frangible (fragile and frail); and amicability (amiability and amity).
By the way, some kangaroo words, it turns out, are not always in agreement with their peers. Those are anti-kangaroo words, such as “animosity,” whose antonym joey is “amity.” “Feast” has “fast,” and “wonderful” yields “woeful.” “She” offers “he,” and “there” contains “here.”
If you’re inclined to hunt for more kangaroo words, I say hop to it.
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.”
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