a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger
Front Hook: S
Given that the letter S begins more words in the English language than any other member of the alphabet, it should be no surprise that there are a lot of front hook examples. I've tried to choose one that surprises.S is for Softener
If most of the "surprise" front hooks occur when the longer (front hooked) word is a bit unusual, this example is the opposite. Here, it's the shorter word that is less known. SOFTENER is quite common, but OFTENER.Sure enough, OFTENER is a good word in Scrabble. I think most people would usually say "more often", but evidently someone thinks OFTENER is perfectly acceptable. There are other odd comparative/superlative forms that come up in Scrabble as well (CLEVERER, EAGERER, HONESTEST, MODESTEST).
With over two thousand S front hook words, keeping the honorable mentions list sort is rather tricky:
- Scoriaceous
- Sedition
- Selfish
- Sgraffiti
- Shellfire
- Simply
- Slavish
- Slowdown
- Spinelike
- Stablemates
- Stickseed
- Stoccata
- Sundress
- Suntanned
- Switchgrass
- Swordplay
-- Eric
[15 October 2014]
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You seem to have missed one of my favorites: (s)laughter.Posted by: A
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