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-Gry, -gry, everywhere a -gry - the endings, not the beginnings

© Sandra Linville

When readers e-mail me with questions, I try to find the answers. Lately, I’ve received quite a few and thought I would address some of them in this article since not all readers want to list their questions in the discussion area.

Two, I’ve discovered, are frequently asked questions and one was pretty obscure. I couldn’t answer that one, but the reader was considerate enough to send me the answer she discovered.

I’ll begin with the question which defeated me. The searcher is a mother of a third-grader who had spent hours on the Internet looking for the definition of famallily. Her daughter’s teacher had asked her class to define this word. Famallily? I know, it was new to me. I looked through my dictionaries, I looked through online dictionaries. Finally, I just plugged the word into Google’s search and came up with a theatrical play about non-traditional family structures. Defeated, I e-mailed her with my regrets. Later that week, she told me the teacher was looking for “all in the family.” Aha! I didn’t turn the challenge upside down, inside out, or look at the word in a different way. It was so obvious. But, I don’t think it was an example of fair play on the part of the teacher.

Another request came while I was online via my Human Click connection. While I was online doing research for another project, a reader asked if I knew three words ending in –gry. The first two came quickly – angry and hungry. Then, the third. I thought, flipped through my dictionary – while she was waiting. I thought of augery, but no, the “e” was essential to the official dictionary spelling. I then remembered reading something on Richard Lederer’s site and visited it. Yes. There it was. His very intolerant view of the –gry! question.

I also checked with Mark Israel’s abundant information about the English language at The Alt.Usage.English FAQ File Apparently, this puzzle has made the rounds of AOL since 1995. The riddle has become mutated from the original which follows:

Think of words ending in 'gry'.
Angry and hungry are two of them.
There are only three words in the English language.
What is the third word?
The word is something that everyone uses every day.
If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.

It's 'language.'
'the' and 'English' are the first and second.

Sometimes the wording is changed which makes it a head-scratcher.

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