Kinney Brothers Publishing

ESL Teaching & Publishing

obsolete words

Fun Facts About English #37 – Words That End in -gry

by

Though hangry was included in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) in the 1990s, only time will tell how long this relatively recent (1918) portmanteau will be with us. Surprising as it is that so few words end in -gry, equally interesting are some of the uncommon, archaic, and obsolete -gry words that have fallen out of use.

Going back to Old and Middle English, archaic variations and compounds using the words hungry and angry were numerous! Consider such colorful expressions as anhungry, unhungry, dog-hungry, meat-hungry, wind-hungry, ever-angry, fire-angry, half-angry, heat-angry, self-angry, and tear-angry.

As for uncommon words, let’s start with gry itself. This extremely rare word is defined as 1/10 of a line and was marked as obsolete in the 1934 Second New International Dictionary.

Other uncommon words include aggry, (a variegated glass bead found in Ghana and England), and meagry (a variation on the word meager). Foreign vocables turned into English-appearing words include the Hindi word puggry (a cloth wrapped around a sun helmet), or the Egyptian word iggry (a word that translates as, ‘Hurry up!’)

In researching this Fun Fact, I unwittingly smacked into a popular -gry riddle — just the kind to leave you feeling half-angry when you’re forced to say, “I giveth up.” You’ll find the answer at the end of this post. Good luck.

Riddle
Think of three words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is. (Hint: the answer is NOT hangry.)

If you found this interesting to read, you might enjoy learning about the rules of stacked adjectives, why the word we is so unique among languages, or the history of counters like, “A murder of crows”!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donad's English Classroom

Stories for Young Readers, Book 1, is a graded textbook for students studying ESL/EFL. Dialogues for Young Speakers, Book 1, follows the Stories for Young Readers series with easy dialogues that will get students up and talking. Both of these textbooks are available as full textbook downloads.

Answer
With the question about -gry words being a kind of smokescreen, the rest of the riddle is interpreted to mean “What is the third word in the three-word phrase the English language?” The answer is “language” — something we use every day. Ugh, right!?

Fun Facts About English #24 – Blatteroon

by

Kinney Brothers Publishing Blatteroon

The word blatteroon is from Latin blatero + -onis. In 1887, James Murray, primary editor of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), included blatteroon among his entries, having drawn it from Thomas Blount’s Glossographia of 1656. Its entry into the OED sparked a minor revival of the word where it otherwise would have faded into history.

Though blatteroon is considered obsolete, it exemplifies a type of loathsome behavior that is readily recognizable throughout history. We have no shortage of contemporary words to describe such personalities, including blowhard, big mouth, loudmouth, windbag, gasbag, and grandstander.

Originating in Midwestern American slang, bloviate is another word that has had a renaissance in past decades. Meaning “to indulge in ‘high falutin’,” the etymology suggests that bloviate is a “compound of blow, in the sense of “to boast” with a mock-Latin ending, as in the word deviate. Bloviate is further defined as “a kind of baby talk, a puerile and wind-blown gibberish. In content, it is a vacuum.”

Bloviation and its style of empty political speech were used to describe US President Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) and his “art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing.” His opponent, William Gibbs McAdoo, described Mr. Harding’s oratory skills as “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.” e.e. cummings eulogized the former president as “The only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors.”

It seems that history never fails to repeat itself.

You might also be interested in learning about Old English words that are worth bringing back! Check out this post on the naughty language of expletive infixations (NSFW), or the surprising history of the verb friend!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom

When it comes to teaching your kids to read and understand the world around them, it’s vital you have quality learning materials. Visit Donald’s English Classroom for downloadable English language materials you can start using today.