Word Relations
Jonathan van der Meer
l’École de SpecGram, London
Each of the sentences below contains two words that have a special relationship. Your job is to identify the relationship in question, and the pairs of words in each sentence for which the relationship holds.
- I balk at the expense of the onyx.
- You vex me! You irk me!
- Used ova go in this bin.
- Can you give tang to a gnat?
- To be or not to be?
- The pigs are pent on the crag.
- How do you nag an ant?
- She likes fur.
- Try this new hair gel!
- Neither George nor Abe went.
- They envy our rail.
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- She studies the Gur language family.
- Who would feed pho to a tiger cub?
- The clerk prefers to cook with Pyrex.
- We’re going to the ABBA concert at noon.
- Study Phon. in Cuba for only $3 a day!
- He thinks of himself as an ur-linguist.
- Her role as abjurer got her nowhere.
- We snuck up on an erne from the rear.
- Why is the navy interested in blue anil dye?
- Let’s go to the bar and have a cold one.
- We’re biologists—we collect hern urea!
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- We warily approached the lush green jungle, terra incognita.
- Her parents ate some bad becuna and now she’s an orphan.
- My Chechen friend has developed a bad case of purpura.
- She uses the variant spelling, Tyrr, with a perverse glee.
- He asked me out and I replied ab imo pectore, “no!”
- Just flap your lips in sync with the music, Britney.
- Fill the vat with water from the river by the ing.
- In Chaucer’s time, they used gurl for any child.
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If you think you’ve figured it out, send your solutions to the editors of SpecGram by March 15th, 2011. If your answer is correct, you could win a SpecGram magnet of your choice. The correct solution and winners, if any, will be announced in the April issue of Speculative Grammarian.
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Examination of the Raartong Language VI: The Intoxicational Affix—J. S. S. van der Fort |
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SpecGram Vol CLXI, No 1 Contents |