Postbag aka mailbox
TIME to open the postbag again, but first, for a change, to discuss its name. Reader One observed that ‘‘Postbags may now be a thing of the past, literally, so why not try a new name for this version of WordWays? Perhaps readers could make suggestions’’.
Mailbox, inbox, inmail . . .
As words and metaphors, I love all these. Still, to encourage readers to respond, I need the most widely applicable term. I reckoned that the older word includes the newer methods, whereas a newer word might discourage those who like to think by pen on to paper. So, readers, reply!
Mailbagging
This topic reminded me of my young days, when I delivered Xmas mails from an old red postman’s bike. The mail sat in shapeless bags on a tray in front of the handlebars — shapeless but functional. For, to quote Auden’s great poem the Night Mail, who can hear and feel himself forgotten?
Scrabbling on
Reader Two took up my mention of words in /Q/ which don’t require a following /U/
[16.2.17] and suggested I join a Scrabble club. Well, since confession is good for the soul, I find Scrabble and the Scrabblegrams can be irritating, with clues like NTDEAOC. It’s good as a clue, since it forms into many feasibles, none of which works out: cantode, condate,
endcoat, decanto, cantoed, and so on. But the answer when I gave up and consulted Andy’s Anagram Solver was TACNODE. How could I have known that?! The pleasure of Scrabble is reduced when the answer is not something you could or (better still) should have got. Take by contrast ERETIOC recently. My best was EEROTIC, but I could and should have got COTERIE. For the record, a tacnode, like its correlative oscnode, is a term from maths, referring to differing symmetries of curves — possibly eerotic to some.
Woolloomooloo
Talking of confession, the postbag is useful for correcting my mistakes . . . I apologise to Readers Three and Four. Three, from Sydney, pounced on my misspelling of Woolloomooloo as Woollooomoolloo [16217 again]. I got carried away by the beauty of Aussie names like this one and Woolloongabba. Mind you, such Eurospellings of indigenous names might be phonetic guesswork, to judge by their derivations. Depending on its derivation, I might even have been right by accident. I will try harder.
Binyon
Reader Four nailed me for misquoting the famous line from Laurence Binyon’s lament for the first dead of WW1. They shall grow not old as we that are left
grow old, which I misremembered prosaically as
They shall not grow old . . . What difference does it make? Binyon inverts the wordorder for solemnity, emphasis and rhythm. By the inversion, the line itself is made to linger on
‘‘grow not old’’, then dips into we ‘‘that are left’’, to conclude with the balancing left grow old. A great, speakable line.
Swashbuckler
The memorability of words is curious. Reader five asked about the memorable word
swashbuckler. Does (s)he swash a
buckle? Yes: by ostentatiously swiping or swatting your buckler (shield), you become a swaggerer or ruffian (1550).
Palindrome champion
Reader Six proposed a new champion palindrome (sentence which reads the same backwards as forwards). Dog a
devil deified lived a god, having seven words and 25 letters, is eclipsed by the equally oddball
Live dirt up a side track carted is a putrid evil, having 11 words, 39
characters.
Responses more welcome than ever, by letter c/o Editor
Or to
wordwaysdunedin@hotmail.com