"just one letter away"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Sep 22, 2010, at 8:58 AM, Bill Mullins wrote:
>
> Newsbank has cites going back to 1989.  Cat is 1 letter from Rat; anger
> is 1 letter from danger; diet is 1 letter away from die; Bob is one
> letter from boob; HPV is one letter from HIV; etc

and Graham Rawle produced hundreds of compositions in his "Lost Consonants" series (#772, from 2002: "Pigs have a natural talent for seeking out ruffles"), originally published in British newspapers.

according to Rawle's site ( http://www.grahamrawle.com/lostconsonants/index.html ), the series appeared in the Weekend Guardian for 15 years and in the Sydney Morning Herald and various magazines, and there are 8 books of the things already published.

but as others have pointed out, this kind of orthographic play (with omissions, additions, substitutions, and transpositions) no doubt goes back to the beginnings of literacy.  surely there's a "just one stroke away" variant involving Chinese characters.

arnold, not that i don't enjoy the genre

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