query

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, January 10, 2001 2:20 pm -0500 Beverly Flanigan
<flanigan at OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU> wrote:

> A TA of mine just asked me what the three English words ending in -gry
> are, and I could only recall "angry" and "hungry."  Can someone remind me
> what the third one is?

There is no third one.  Here's Jesse S's note from the archives.  I must
say, I'm as sick of the query as he was then!  Hard to believe how often
this goes around.

Lynne


Date:  Thu, 9 May 1996 10:38:50 -0400
  From:  Jesse T Sheidlower  jester at PANIX.COM
  Subject: Re: Words that end in GRY


    In the past few weeks I've seen this unanswered puzzler pop up in three
    different circles. So excuse me while I introduce it to this circle
which
    might be able to answer it.

    The English language has (at least) three words that end in GRY.
"Angry" and
    "hungry" are two of them. What is the third, which purportedly is an
everyday
    word?

  AAAAaaaaargh!

  Does _every corner_ of the Internet have to be saturated with this?

  The answer to the riddle in the form you heard it (as opposed to the
  form you're quoting) is either "what" or "three." It's a shaggy-dog
  riddle. ("There are three words..." the question begins, and when the
  question asks "what is the third word?" it's really asking "what is
  the third word of the riddle?" Alternately, the question is asked
  earlier in the riddle, and then the last line is "'What' is the
  word.", declaratively--this version only works when heard orally.)

  As for words that end in -gry, there are a whole bunch, none of them
  common, including puggry, maugry, iggry, aggry, gry, and others, but
  the best is _nugry,_ coined on rec.games.puzzles to mean 'the sort of
  person who will ask the words ending in -gry question without
  checking to see if five billion people have already asked it here
  before'.

  JTS



M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320