| Subject: Re: 3 words ending with "gry" |
Author:
bertie george
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Date Posted: 15:49:48 01/02/05 Sun
In reply to:
Shareffa
's message, "Re: 3 words ending with "gry"" on 09:06:38 10/17/03 Fri
>>There isn't one!
>>what is the third word?
>>This `riddle' has been circulating in email for years
>>now, in various forms of words, and had appeared in
>>print media before that. Dictionary and reference
>>departments the world over have been plagued by
>>questions about it. It seems to have originated as a
>>trick question, but the wording has become so garbled
>>in subsequent transmission that it is hard to tell
>>what was originally intended. The most probable answer
>>is that, in the original wording, the question was
>>phrased something like this:
>>
>>Think of words ending in -gry. `Angry' and `hungry'
>>are two of them. What is the third word in the English
>>language? You use it every day, and if you were
>>listening carefully, I've just told you what it is.
>>The answer, of course, is `language' (the third word
>>in `the English language').
>>
>>There are several other English words ending in -gry
>>which are listed in the complete Oxford English
>>Dictionary, but none of them could be described as
>>common. They include the trivial oddities un-angry and
>>a-hungry, and
>>
>>aggry: aggry beads, according to various 19th-century
>>writers, are coloured glass beads found buried in the
>>ground in parts of Africa.
>>begry: a 15th-century spelling of beggary.
>>conyngry: a 17th-century spelling of the obsolete word
>>conynger, meaning `rabbit warren', which survives in
>>old English field names such as `Conery' and
>>`Coneygar'.
>>gry: the name for a hundredth of an inch in a
>>long-forgotten decimal system of measurement devised
>>by the philosopher John Locke (and presumably
>>pronounced to rhyme with `cry').
>>higry-pigry: an 18th-century rendition of the drug
>>hiera picra.
>>iggry: an old army slang word meaning `hurry up',
>>borrowed from Arabic.
>>meagry: a rare obsolete word meaning
>`meagre-looking'.
>>menagry: an 18th-century spelling of menagerie.
>>nangry: a rare 17th-century spelling of angry.
>>podagry: a 17th-century spelling of podagra, a medical
>>term for gout.
>>puggry: a 19th-century spelling of the Hindi word
>>pagri (in English usually puggaree or puggree),
>>referring either to a turban or to a piece of cloth
>>worn around a sun-helmet.
>>skugry: 16th-century spelling of the dialect word
>>scuggery meaning `secrecy' (the faint echo of
>>`skulduggery' is quite accidental!).
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