 | |
| Author | Dmitri Borgmann |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Published | 1965 |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 318 |
| OCLC | 8478220 |
| Followed by | Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought |
Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities is a 1965 book written by Dmitri Borgmann.
Borgmann introduces his book by stating that he hopes it will "elevate recreational linguistics to the same high level of esteem now enjoyed by recreational mathematics" and will cultivate in the reader an awareness of the beauty of words. Chapter by chapter, the book goes on to describe and provide examples of long-established forms of letter-play, such as palindromes and reversals, antigrams, anagrams, pangrams, transpositions, and word squares. Also included are chapters on word-level phenomena, such as sentence palindromes, and wordplay involving arithmetic and geometric progressions. Piphilology and various methods of encoding the digits of pi into word mnemonics are also discussed.
On publication the book attracted favourable reviews, with Time calling it "one of the year's most peculiar and fascinating books", [1] Kirkus Reviews summarizing it as "intellectual busy work which is fine entertainment", [2] and Scientific American 's James R. Newman's lauding it as "the best, most comprehensive book ever written on… recreational linguistics". [3] Later writers have come to regard the book as "groundbreaking", noting that it was the first book devoted solely to the description and study of wordplay, rather than simply providing a list of puzzles. [4] [5] [6] [7]
The book is notable for having introduced and popularized the use of the word logology to mean recreational linguistics, or the study and practice of wordplay. [6] [8] Borgmann has since been referred to as the "Father of Logology" and his book is credited with ushering in a "golden age of wordplay". [5] [6] [9] The book's publicity led to Borgmann being contracted by industrial design firm Loewy & Snaith to invent brand names for its client Standard Oil, and to Greenwood Periodicals selecting him to establish and edit their logology journal, Word Ways . [5] [10]
Language on Vacation was published in 1965 by Charles Scribner's Sons; recreational mathematician Joseph Madachy served as the author's literary agent. [11] The book went through at least two printings, but as of 2005 it was out of print. [7] [12] The manuscript Borgmann originally submitted contained two additional chapters, on word play involving phonetics and semantics, which were rejected by the publisher. Some of this material was recycled for Borgmann's second book, Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought , and other topics were worked into Word Ways articles. [7]
A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward, such as madam or racecar.
The National Puzzlers' League (NPL) is a nonprofit organization focused on puzzling, primarily in the realm of word play and word games. Founded in 1883, it is the oldest puzzlers' organization in the world. It originally hosted semiannual conventions in February and September of each year, but conventions are now held annually, in July.
Willard Richardson Espy was an American editor, philologist, writer, poet, and local historian. Raised in the seaside village of Oysterville, Washington, Espy later studied at the University of Redlands in California before becoming an editor in New York City, as well as a contributor to Reader's Digest, The New Yorker, Punch, and other publications.
A. Ross Eckler Jr. was an American logologist, statistician, and author, the son of statistician A. Ross Eckler. He served in the US Army from 1946 – 1947. He received a BA from Swarthmore College with High Honors in 1950 and a PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 1954.
A word square is a special type of acrostic. It consists of a set of words written out in a square grid, such that the same words can be read both horizontally and vertically. The number of words, which is equal to the number of letters in each word, is known as the "order" of the square. For example, this is an order 5 square:
Darryl Francis is a well-known author of books on Scrabble.
Dmitri Alfred Borgmann was a German-American author best known for his work in recreational linguistics.
Zzxjoanw is a fictitious entry in an encyclopedia which fooled logologists for many years. It referred to a purported Māori word meaning "drum", "fife", or "conclusion".
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in English, often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.
A heterogram is a word, phrase, or sentence in which no letter of the alphabet occurs more than once. The terms isogram and nonpattern word have also been used to mean the same thing.
Logology is the field of recreational linguistics, an activity that encompasses a wide variety of word games and wordplay. The term is analogous to the term "recreational mathematics".
Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics is a quarterly magazine on recreational linguistics, logology and word play. It was established by Dmitri Borgmann in 1968 at the behest of Martin Gardner. Howard Bergerson took over as editor-in-chief for 1969, but stepped down when Greenwood Periodicals dropped the publication. A. Ross Eckler Jr., a statistician at Bell Labs, became editor until 2006, when he was succeeded by Jeremiah Farrell.
Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was a noted British wordplay and recreational mathematics expert. He is best known for devising the palindrome "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!".
Howard William Bergerson was an American writer and poet, noted for his mastery of palindromes and other forms of wordplay.
A panalphabetic window is a stretch of text that contains all the letters of the alphabet in order. It is a special type of pangram or pangrammatic window.
James Albert Lindon was an English puzzle enthusiast and poet specialising in light verse, constrained writing, and children's poetry.
A vocabularyclept poem is a poem which is formed by taking the words of an existing poem and rearranging them into a new work of literature.
Palindromes and Anagrams is a 1973 non-fiction book on wordplay by Howard W. Bergerson.
The Puzzle Lovers Club was an American company which ran word game contests by mail.
Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought is a 1967 book written by Dmitri Borgmann.