Do hyphenated words count as one word or two? The reason I ask is that I was playing that 'make up a story'game, y'know where each person in the circle continues the story, one - word - at - a - time.
There were a lot of technicalities, as I was playing with a group of children and their sence of justice knows no bounds except when it's their go and then anything goes. They can even use the word 'pooh' totally out of context and not get told off by each other, and the grown ups do that thing where we project into each others mind - If You Ignore It They Will Know We Are Cross And Stop Being Silly. Can I tell you now, I don't know why we do that because it really doesn't work and why can't we project the answers to more diffcult problems into each other minds, because that would be much more useful.
But am I allowed to say 'upside - down'? NO!!
...because it's two words.
Well I don't think it is - what say you?
Thoughts and wonderings reflecting my eternal and earthly journey How many more corners? Does anyone know?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(79)
-
▼
April
(16)
- Which...blender?
- Yey, I did it!
- This Is Cool.
- Two in One Day.
- My Top 10 ( see previous Blog - hurrah!)
- Openly nicking an idea from Matt White.
- Rites of Passage.
- His Way is Best?
- That's a BIG number.
- A Grand Day Out.
- Look at the time!!
- No Chocolate B-log.
- Chocolate B-log II
- Chocolate B-log. My Easter Reflections
- Hyphenated Words.
- Bloggin' Targets
-
▼
April
(16)
3 comments:
hey there liz...
i looked it up in my "stick on the wall dictionary" and it is unfortunatly for you 2 seperate words... no hyphen, which, unless the oxford dictionary is wrong, you were trying to cheat!
hope your ok
Hey Sarah! Whilst I don't refute the font of all knowledge that is the Oxford English Dictionary, I don't particularly agree. You see 'upside' is one word that means the upppermost part that faces up. 'Down' is one word that means the opposite of up, amongst other things.So I agree that 'upside-down' is two words technically, but it has one meaning.Saying 'upside' or 'down' as my word would not have made sence and wouldn't have been half as funny in the context of the story, in my opinion.
As for me being a cheat - how very dare you!! :)
I think it requires a list of rules to be drawn up for such games that will cover all eventualities. In the future, maybe you should make sure you define whether you are playing the one word game, or the one meaning game.
Having said that, sorry Liz, but I am with Sarah on this one. Upside means, the highest or uppermost side of anything wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn. In that sense upside-down means the highest or uppermost part is actually facing down. So upside is a word in its own right, as is down.
Post a Comment