11 abr 2011

Another One

expert / fissure / form of a drug / sharp sound

6 comentarios:

Thomas dijo...

Crack, right?

I've never played this game before. I had to go back to that "put down" post and see the answer before I even understood what I supposed to do.

Jonathan dijo...

Yes. Like a crack shot, crack cocaine, a crack in the ceiling, the crack of a whip.

Thomas dijo...

Has anyone ever designed one that has two (or more) equally good solutions? A sort of polysemous polysemy puzzle.

Jonathan dijo...

Why don't you try that? You could start with words like charge and load and see if you can some up with enough ways in which those two words are synonymous.

Vance Maverick dijo...

Of these, only "expert" is a little tricky; seeing it in isolation, I thought only of the noun form.

Language Log does these regularly, as you know. Pullum's latest wound up with a good rant.

Thomas, I like your variant; a good one to puzzle over in insomniac nights.

Vance Maverick dijo...

Whoops, sorry, that's what I get for reading the blog from the top of the page -- obviously Language Log was the starting point.

When the polysemy depends on metaphorical extension, then I suspect there won't be a parallel polysemy from another base word. For example, there are lots of ways to say "unripe", but only one of them is conventionally applied to people.