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English Is A
Crazy Language
From a CNO reader
Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning.
And a homograph that is also pronounced differently is a
heteronym.
Read all the way to the end... Somebody spent a lot of time and effort
to put this 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 morerefuse.
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 thedesert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present.
8) A large-mouth 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 seeing that object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row the longboat.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are nearby.
15) A seamstress and a sewer tripped and fell into an open sewer drain.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sowhow to sow.
17) The wind was simply too strong to wind in the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed atear.
19) My job was to subject each subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimatefriend without hurting
her feelings?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor
pine are in a pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England,
nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies ... while
sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
Most of us 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 don't preachers praught? And 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 basically 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, only occasionally
involves 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'?
Herman The Printer
"Finesse At The Press"
www.hermantheprinter.com
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