Q: Pupil of the eye as the most expansive male organ

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/24/2006 09:15 AM, JL wrote:
>Bill's list is far more rigorous than my classmate's. Only the first
>six riddles are familiar to me.
>
>   I heard Number 2 in, I believe, the spring of 1965.  It was
> rumored in my high school that the well-known frenetic host of a
> local TV "kid's show" (much watched by teens of the day for its
> absurd humor) had been fined or taken off the air for asking,
> "Kids, what's the shortest word there is that starts with F and
> ends with CK ?"  The answer, of course, was "firetruck." (Check
> your 1965 dictionary !)

This puzzled me the first time I saw it here, but I let it pass.  No
mas!  Aren't flack/fleck/flick/flock as well as frock shorter than
firetruck?  And common enough today--I ignore  the four-letter "fack"
and "feck", as well as some additional but apparently very uncommon
or obsolete 5-letter words (viz. OED2).

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org