Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Words, Words, Words

I was thinking about words a while back and it seemed to me that there weren't a whole lot of words with the ending "-sp". (Turns out there are 16.) So I sat down and made a list of what I could think of:
Cusp
Clasp
Asp
Rasp
Gasp
Hasp

And, after I came up with that list, I thought I'd check the OED to see if there were more that were obscure enough for me not to know them.

First I found that I'd left out another 5 words that I did know, but hadn't sprung to mind for whatever reason:

Wisp
Crisp
Wasp
Grasp
Lisp

And then there were in fact another 5 that were unknown to me:

Berisp (censure, reprove)
Gnasp (to snap (at))
Risp (bush, branch, twig, esp to catch birds)
Rosp (scrape away, destroy OR belch)
Whisp (slight puff of wind or sprinkle of rain)

I'm particularly fond of "berisp". I'll have to see if I can work that into my vocabulary.

1 comment:

  1. "Lisp" was the first word I thought of when I read the first sentence. Turns out the words ending in -sp that you knew and that I knew were exactly the same ones.

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