Scrabble Pangrams

Last week I asked for readers to send in their best Scrabble-themed pangrams (sentences using all 26 letters of the alphabet).  Evidently there are not many pangram enthusiasts among this crowd, because I did not receive many entries.  That said, what follows still represents the best (and possibly only) collection of Scrabble-themed pangrams you will find!

Audrey Tumbarello wins the prize for composing the shortest one, though some might find it a bit contrived:

Vext? Play: qursh, zonk, cwm, jib, fudge.  (28 letters)

Jeff Kastner sent two short ones, a variation on the same theme:

Vext jock bumping flashy word quiz.  (29)
Jock vext by dumping flash word quiz.  (30)

I prefer the second one, which wins the prize for a very short (30 or fewer letters) pangram that reads (more-or-less) like a natural sentence.  Jeff also sent in a longer, contrived example, explaining “it's a shortcut, true... but at least these actually were bingos I've played before”:

My bingos: AQUAVIT, FOXHOLE, MUZJIKS, and SCREWUP.  (39)

My own compositions, which I first unveiled in the original PANGRAM entry, were the only ones that aimed for slightly longer but more conversational pangrams:

Joyful word maven picks tough quiz box.  (32)
Joky wiz vanquished expert scrabble game foe.  (38)

I prefer the second one and hope that it may inspire others to take up the whimsical art of the Scrabble pangram.  If you should be moved to compose some now, or if you discover others, please pass them on to me.  Or, in pangram form:

Jovial hack besought zany mix of word quips.  (36)

Pronunciation of COLONEL

Mailbag

An occasional segment wherein TileHead responds to reader questions and comments.  You can contact TileHead by email at <tilehead@gmail.com> or by leaving a comment on a blog story or a Facebook post.

From the mailbag:
Curran Eggertson sent in the following query: I always wondered, what's the story behind COLONEL's pronunciation?

TileHead responds:
Good question!  Both the whims of early spelling and the laziness of pronunciation come into play with COLONEL.

The word derives from the Italian colonnella ("commander of a column of soldiers"), but there were two early forms in English, via French: COLONEL and CORONEL. The former is more etymologically correct, but the latter was common for a while, especially in speech.  Eventually the COLONEL spelling won out, but the "cor'nel/kernel" pronunciation remained.

Another factor is that COLONEL is awkward to pronounce as it is spelled, especially those nearby L's.  In this respect, the pronunciation of COLONEL is a good example of the linguistic characteristic known as DISSIMILATION, in which similar nearby sounds in a word tend to become pronounced differently, or in which one of the similar sounds is dropped completely.  This happens in Romance languages most frequently with nearby L's and R's, with R-R dissimilation being most common in English.  For example, the Latin turtur became the English TURTLE, and the Latin purpura became the English PURPLE; for more modern examples, think of how some people say "lib'ary" for LIBRARY, "supprise" for SURPRISE, "tempature" for TEMPERATURE, and so on.  The pronunciation of COLONEL is a rare case of L-L dissimilation that endured and eventually became the "correct" pronunciation.