Below are clues to the names of a number of cities. The name of each city is a homograph of an English word. The clues provided are vaguely etymological, and probably not sufficiently helpful. Some knowledge of geography will provide assistance, but possibly not enough. Our puzzles are hard. Life is hard. Get over it.
These cities are all in the United States, and have populations over 100,000 according to one or more random reference works.
- ???, Alabama
- via Anglo-
French and Old French, from Latin, going back to the PIE root *meuə- - ???, Alaska
- with a root, via Old English and Latin, from a Greek word meaning “to bend”
- ???, California
- via Latin, from a Greek word meaning “a curved object” or “crown”
- ???, Colorado
- via Middle English, possibly from a Scandinavian source, meaning “noisy stone”
- ???, Illinois
- from Latin, going back to the PIE root *ausōs-
- ???, Massachusetts
- via Middle English and Old French, from a Latin word meaning “hearts together”
- ???, Michigan
- via Old English, from Germanic, going back to the PIE root *(s)plind-
- ???, Michigan
- via Anglo-
French, Old Norman French, and Old French, possibly from Gaulish *varenna - ???, Missouri
- with a root, via Middle French, from a Latin word meaning “to hang down”
- ???, New York
- via Portuguese and Latin, from a Greek word for a kind of gazelle or antelope
- ???, Rhode Island
- with a root, via Middle English, from a Latin word meaning “to foresee”
- ???, Texas
- from Old French, possibly from a Frankish word meaning “to adorn or bedeck”
If you think you’ve figured out more than a couple of them, send your wild and unsubstantiated guesses to the editors of SpecGram. If we get your responses by May 15th, 2011, you could win a SpecGram magnet of your choice. The correct solution and winners, if any, will be announced in the June issue of Speculative Grammarian.
Speaking of winners, these fine folks figured out the special relationship among the words in the sentences that make up the “Word Relations” puzzle from the February issue, and will receive valuable prizes.
• Sara Kessler • Justin Baker • T.J. Heins • Adam Hesterberg •
For those of you who didn’t figure it out, here’s the solution: there are two words in each sentence that are ROT13 variations of each other. ROT13 is a simple Caesar cipher that shifts every letter by 13 places. A becomes N and N becomes A, B becomes O and O becomes B, etc. Here are the relevant word pairs: balk/onyx; irk/vex; bin/ova; gnat/tang; be/or; crag/pent; ant/nag; fur/she; gel/try; Abe/nor; rail/envy; the/Gur; cub/pho; Pyrex/clerk; ABBA/noon; phon/Cuba; he/ur; nowhere/abjurer; rear/erne; anil/navy; one/bar; urea/hern; terra/green; orphan/becuna; purpura/Chechen; glee/Tyrr; no/ab; sync/flap; ing/vat; gurl/they
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Book Review: Van Der Fort’s Guide to Field Linguistics by J. S. S. van der Fort |
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SpecGram Vol CLXI, No 3 Contents |