Hello all, I am back from vacation, but rather than get right back into programming language design, let’s have some fun for a Friday.
Most of you are probably familiar with iambic pentameter, which is the poetic meter that Shakespeare wrote in: most lines in Shakespeare are ten syllables, divided up into five iambic feet. Each foot has an unstressed syllable at the beginning and a stressed syllable at the end. As Hamlet says:
O, THAT this TOO too SOlid FLESH would MELT Thaw AND reSOLVE itSELF inTO a DEW!
Very serious, iambs. By contrast, the trochee, in which the stress comes on the first syllable, is hilarious. All you have to do to make internet comedy gold is put two or more trochees together. Try it!
NINja DOCtor VERsus BAcon PIrate DILbert RObot UNder ANgry CHIcken
You could easily write an automated movie elevator pitch generator that was all trochees, and likely get results no worse than the last few years of Hollywood movies.
Harder to work with than the trochee is the dactyl, or, more specifically, the double dactyl. A dactyl is a poetic foot with three syllables, the first one stressed. A double dactyl is either simply two dactyls, or a poem in the following double-dactyl-heavy form:
DUM dum dum DUM dum dum -- nonsense DUM dum dum DUM dum dum -- person's name DUM dum dum DUM dum dum -- description of person DUM dum dum DUM. -- rhymes with line 8, ends sentence. DUM dum dum DUM dum dum -- second section comments further DUM dum dum DUM dum dum -- one of lines 5, 6 or 7 is a single word DUM dum dum DUM dum dum -- DUM dum dum DUM. -- rhymes with line 4
The two hardest parts of the double dactyl are coming up with a person’s name and coming up with a single six syllable word. Serious double dactyl enthusiasts go further and require each double dactyl to have a unique six syllable word, but that seems a bit too hard core for me.
For example, here’s one I wrote which is a very short summary and critique of a Kurt Vonnegut short story.
Higgledy-piggledy Harrison Bergeron Became the Emperor And then was shot. Vonnegut wasn’t an Egalitarian. Satiric tone makes for Unlikely plot.
I’ve started compiling a list of the double-dactyl six syllable words by reading the Scrabble tournament word list. Of the first five thousand words in the list I’ve found eighteen double dactyls. There are 178 thousand words in the list, so I’ve got a ways to go yet. So far:
abecedarian abiogenesis abiological accessibility acetaminophen addressability admirability aerodynamical aerodynamicist albuminuria allergenicity alphanumerical alterability ambassadorial ambidexterity amiability amicability amphitheatrical
My challenge to you is: write a double dactyl on the subject of Benedict Cumberbatch, and leave it in the comments. Any additions to my list of double dactyl words would also be appreciated.
Fabulous adventures in coding 
I decline on the grounds that it’s impossible to put the emphasis on the right syllable when rhyming “Spock” with “SherLOCK”.
Higgledy-piggledy
Benedict Cumberbatch,
Brilliant thespian
He makes me sigh.
Incontrovertibly
I liked him best while in
Tinker and Tailor and
Soldier and Spy.
I like that it only works with the British pronunciation of “brilliant”. Americans tend to say the diphthong “brill-yant”.
I suspect English/American pronounciation differences could kill (or create, depending on your point of view) quite a few double-dactyls. For example I’d tend to pronounce two of the words on your (Eric’s) list of 6-syllable words as aDRESSaBiLity and acESSaBILity.
A nice challenge!
AH–loo-MIN-ee-UM
Ottermeme, tumblrstream
Benedict Cumberbatch
Maybe you saw him in
To Kill A King
But nerds all adore him
Enthusiastically
As Holmes, Assange, and Khan
Noonien Singh
Nice!
Thanks! I was originally going with:
“As Sherlock, Assange, and
Khan Noonien Singh”
which flows a little better but adds a syllable.
As it stands I’m taking a good bit of liberty with the emphasis of as-SANGE.
Excellent work – but technically a spoiler….
My effort (I’ve always found there was something odd about his eyes):
Withering Slytherin
Benedict Cumberbatch
Exobiologists
Study his face.
They try to fathom the
Anthropomimicry
Skills of his evident
Alien Race.
Nicely done!
Really liked this one
Here are some I found using the CMU pronouncing dictionary (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict): [accessibility], aerodynamically, [aerodynamicist], aerodynamicists, agroindustrial, amiability, analyticity, antemeridian, anthropological, anthropomorphism, antibacterial, antibioticos, anticompetitive, applicability, archaeological, archeological, asiamerica, astrophotography, audiovisual, autobiographer, autobiographies, autobiography, benzodiazepine, biodegradable, biodiversity, biomaterial, biomaterials, bisexuality, cardiovascular, characteristically, chriptosporidium, cinematographer, cinematography, comparability, conticommodity, convertibility, counterinsurgencies, counterinsurgency, counterintelligence, cryptosporidium, czechoslovakia, czechoslovakia’s, czechoslovakian, deontological, dermatological, disciplinarian, disciplinarians, elephantiasis, eligibility, endocrinologist, endocrinologist’s, endocrinologists, endocrinology, entrepreneurial, eschatological, etymological, extracurricular, extraterrestrial, favorability, gardenamerica, gastrointestinal, geopolitical, geopolitically, gynecological, heterosexual, heterosexuals, homogeneity, hydroencephalus, hyperactivity, hypoglycemia, ideological, ideologically, immunological, immunotherapy, improvisational, indianapolis, individualist, inferiority, infinitesimal, infotechnology, instrumentality, interamerican, interferometer, intermolecular, intertechnology, machiavellian, majoritarian, malleability, marketability, marketamerica, mediterranean, megalomania, mesopotamia, mesopotamian, mesopotamians, meteorologist, meteorologist’s, meteorologists, meteorology, methodological, microbiologist, microbiologists, municipalities, municipality, neoconservative, neoconservatives, nomenclatorial, octogenarian, organizational, organogenesis, ornithological, palatability, paleobotany, paleontologist, paleontologists, paleontology, parliamentarian, parliamentarians, pharmacological, physiological, physiologically, profitability, prosecutorial, psychoanalysis, radiological, representational, retroactivity, semicylindrical, sentimentality, sociological, sovietologist, sovietologists, spirituality, stereomicroscope, stereotypical, superamerica, superiority, supermajority, teleological, toxicological, transferability, ultraconservative, universality, unsatisfactory, videoconferencing, villavicencio, vulnerabilities, vulnerability
Wow, that is awesome! I had no idea there was such a dictionary. Thanks!
I had cryptosporidiosis when I was eleven or so; I don’t recommend it. At the time of course I did not know that cryptosporidium, the protozoan responsible, was a double dactyl.
What Josh said. This really is a job for CMUdict, not a regular dictionary. Now that you know about it, I encourage you to use it for the power of good — many interesting questions about words can be answered with it.
Indeed, I look forward to it.
And now let’s have your double dactyl, Mr. I’m Living In London Town.
Considerably late to the game here, but I wonder whether you’d be willing to elaborate on how you used the CMU dictionary to find double dactylic words.
Ok, so I cheated on the emphasis.
Tribbley troubley
Benedict Cumberbatch
Went Into Darkness with
Bones, Kirk and Spock.
Yet it’s a virtual
Impossibility
Not still to see him as
Clever SherLOCK.
I like it!
Might be possible to avoid the emphasis problem by rhyming “Bones” with “Holmes”, but that’s still a stretch!
Higgledy-piggledy
Benedict Cumberbatch
Consulting detective
Of London town
Crime fighting mastermind
Improvisational
With help from John Watson
Crime rates go down
Sort of a poetry
Benedict Cumberbatch
May wholeheartedly
Appreciate.
Pseudo-emotional,
Extraterrestrial —
God Bless America,
Pinter and stuff.
Funny you should bring up Shakespeare today.
For the last month, I’ve been working on a .NET compiler for the Shakespeare Programming Language (shakespearelang.sourceforge.net).
I hope to have the article about it on my blog (see above) out over the weekend.
Although some people slog through iambic pentameter, drearily stressing every other syllable, a web page I found some years ago but cannot relocate suggests that Shakespeare’s intention was almost certainly to have readers use a bit more judgment.
Shall I comPARE thee, to a SUMmer’s day
Thou art more LOVEly and more TEMperate.
Harsh WINDS do SHAKE the darling buds of MAY
And SUMmer’s BREEZE hath all too short a DATE.
Examining Shakespeare’s sonnets, one will find that while the “syllabic” rhyme scheme is always ABAB, there is a “rhythmic” pattern AABB. Some lines may have possible readings which wouldn’t work well with the paired line (e.g. “summer’s DAY” might work well, but “temperATE” would be awkward), but it’s almost always possible to find a rhythm that will work well for both lines in each couplet, and in many cases that rhythm would work badly for the other couplet in the quatrain [e.g. “BUDS of May” and “SHORT a date” would seem awkward].
If you’re ever in a literary mood, try looking at Shakespeare’s sonnets with that sort of rhythmic pattern in mind–I think you’ll enjoy it.
Oh, absolutely, clearly Shakespeare is using iambic pentameter to inform the shape of the text and to make it easier to memorize, not as a metronome that must be obeyed. I actually had to look quite a ways through Hamlet to find a pair of lines that stood alone, were memorable, and were strongly in the meter. (And even the one I chose is pretty weak on that “AND”.)
That exploration of rhythm is interesting, but very incomplete without taking into account the time. English used to be very different, many rhymes and many stresses, vowels moved.
One I wrote about 20 years ago:
Higgledy Piggledy
Andrew Lloyed Weber, con-
ducting his orchestra,
heard a wrong note.
Fearing a misprint he
picked up the score and then
hyper-attentively
checked what he wrote.
Terrapin solenoid,
Benedict Cumberbatch
Isn’t a psychopath,
Nor is he mad.
Disregard amateur
Psychoanalysis:
Benny’s an actor and
Isn’t half bad.
Love it!
Higgledy piggledy
Benedict Cumberbatch
Actor whose name is a
rhyming device.
Blog post’s misspelling, un-
characteristically,
makes Eric Lippert look
less than precise.
Well that’s the oddest way anyone has yet pointed out a typo. Not sure if I should fix it or not.
I’ll give it whirl:
Higgledy-piggledy
Benedict Cumberbatch
Deerstalker, a warp core
Contrasts Eric Lippert
Psychopathologist
Programmer, columnist
Their talents are varied
Yet often, both assert.
Disclaimers:
[1] Psychopathologist refers to Sherlock, ish (I can’t speak to Eric’s expertise in that department).
[2] I’m not sure if it’s legal to split Er-ic across lines and make the emphasis weird.
[3] I’m not sure if Eric actually (Debug.Assert)’s often.
I assert frequently. 🙂
Superb, I shall take the Lippert smiley face as victory over the internet, and begin work on the “Asserting Eric Lippert” meme. =D
Flibbertigibbety
Benedict Cumberbatch,
Born of a Fendahl
Now giving Kirk grief.
Stereotypically
Machiavellian
(But best on the wireless
As Flight Captain Crieff.)
HEAVENS TO BETSY! Couldn’t agree more #HidingLemonNow
Otterly face-angled
Benedict Cumberbatch
cinematographers
struggle to frame.
Pondering lighting his
physiological
facial anatomy
causes disdain.
Hobbitsy-wobbitsy
Benedict Cumberbatch
Elegant baritone
Smaug hit the spot
Closing in quickly on
Quadragenarian
Maybe he’ll seek an
Original plot
Higgledy-piggledy
Benedict Cumberbatch
Horse-face-d actor, no
Superstar yet.
He portrays Holmes sans the
Approachability
Given the slueth by one
Jeremy Brett.
I didn’t mean to come off all ant-Benedict; I actually quite like him. He really emphasizes the less affable side of Sherlock though.
Microsoft did release
Visual Studio
and messed it up beyond
recognition
getting work done was an
impossibility
I did skip it of my
own volition.
Hickory Dickory
Benedict Cumberbatch
Dragon’s voice, Sauron’s walk
There, back again
Bilbo bags Top billing
Coincidentally
Freeman plays His Pal, Watson
Back from campaign
I suspect there should be a Kevin Bacon reference in there somewhere, but 6 degrees of separation doesn’t equate to six syllables.
aargh, that should be “There *and* back again”
Crickety-wickety Benedict Cumberbatch
His name’s so English it pauses for tea
Not an antidisestablishmentarian
For Queen and Country indubitably
Crap, wait, too many negations in line three. Replace “Not an” with “Quite the”. 🙂
Higgledy-piggledy
Benedict Cumberbatch,
Stereotypical
Hobbitreincarnate.
Machiavellian
extraterrestrial,
Comparability
Courts fanboy hate.
Turing and Sherlock make
Benedict Cumberbatch
Oscar material
Long may he shine!
Smaug’s burning countenance
Pyromaniacally
Won’t be the reason
He wins it this time.
—Tom Whitmore over at Making Light
Googled “Benedict Cumberbatch double dactyl” and ended up here. This page may have found a kind of immortality!
In honor of the upcoming movie, how about:
Ragador-Shmagador,
Benedict Cumberbatch
called unto sorcery
became very Strange,
Fought an irascible
extradimensional
entity, found that he
relished the change!
Just because your page was the top hit on a search for “Rewrite Hamlet in double dactyls”:
Higgledy piggledy, that is the question, sir:
whether tis nobler to suffer or not,
the slings and the arrows of outrageous fortune —
play the hand dealt or just give up the pot?