Comments on: English words which look like their meaning

By: Philippe

Philippe — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:41:28 +0000

Hi again ! I’m a primary teacher in France and I
just tried to work about these “autologyphs” with
pupils aged from 10 to 11. It worked very well !
Some found original solutions in french (like
parapluie, chien, crayon…), some found good
things in german (hund), some found new things
in english (foot, cup).
I will keep on searching with them a few days.
Using the classroom brainstorming as a laboratory
can increase the number of discoveries pretty fast !
By the way, I’m also interested in music : actually, I play mouth harp under the pseudonym
harpacat (it remembers the album Harp Attack with an inversion of sounds). I also invented
an autologlyph with the word “l’harmonica” (i.e. the mouth harp in french) and with my own
surname (which is another name for cat in french and represents naturally a cat).
I find it very interesting to increase this way
the pupils’ vocabulary in a foreign language and I’m going to search on… (I’m both teaching german and english at school and that’s what I prefer to teach !)
Regards.

By: Philippe

Philippe — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:42:46 +0000

Actually, shark is an excellent one ! I saw it during a trip on a sticker.

By: Philippe

Philippe — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:41:39 +0000

In german, the word “Schwalbe” (as well as its english equivalent “swallow”) permits the “w” to draw the tail, whereas “sch” represents one wing and “albe” the other one. Because the point is the tail ! Sorry but the joke works only in french !

Regards

By: chris

chris — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:05:25 +0000

Brenda – it’s calligram…

By: Brenda

Brenda — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:05:07 +0000

Does anyone know if there is a term for the drawing of a word that actually looks like what the word means? For example, drawing the word “melt” melting down the page?

By: English speaker

English speaker — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:05:01 +0000

I don’t get it.

By: Morten Bergfall

Morten Bergfall — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:18:22 +0000

Though “researching” analogies, browsing fruitlessly through the few pages containing both the words “quisling” and “finlandization” I stumbled upon your post.

You give a highly enjoyable and succinct narrative(?) to an extremely complex and intriguing aspect of language…

Stop rambling, thank the nice man… ;-)

Regards,
Morten
Norway

By: Concorde22

Concorde22 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:27:52 +0000

OK looks like a sideways person…usually one is either referring to their own or someone else’s feelings I.E. a person…..probably doesn’t count but I just thought it’s pretty cool.

(Hi!>OK

^That is Bob^

By: Carl Morris

Carl Morris — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:36:23 +0000

Nobody should apologise for such quality.

I like tap.

Yeah! I like OX!

By: Stef

Stef — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:21:40 +0000

Sorry. Got these on the brain!

tap