Un-truthful words.
Four is the definitive "truthful word" because it has four letters. "Unfour" is also truthful as it doesn't have four letters, but is untruthful as it's not a real word. Following an excursion into the un- section of the dictionary I found heaps of truthful and untruthful words, as well as some both truthful and untruthful--like unfour but real words. Here's a sampling, mostly of linguistic interest. All these words are in Web-3 except those marked * [in Random House Unabr.'66] or ** [in Macquarie Dict.'01]. (Most * are fairly common words--Web-3 isn't unabridged after all!) In addition, many coinages of truthful logological unwords are possible--unword, unpalindromic, unpangrammatic, unalphonetic, untautonymic, etc--as well as untruthfuls like unanagrammable ["Be an amalgam run."], unlipogrammatic [acgilmnoprtu], unodd, untall, etc.</p><pre> TRUTHFUL unabbreviated unalphabetical * unbalanced unbiblical
unbold * uncapitalised undotted * un-french
unhyphenated unindented ** unitalicized * unsymmetrical unpatented [Thank God some words still belong to everyone.] UNTRUTHFUL uneccentric * uneven (letter number) unending. (Letters 2-7 are.) unmeaning unpatterned *** unsymbolic unalterable undefinable unthinkable [See!]
["inalterable"] ["Can't be defined."] unround [a round word phonetically (lips rounded in pronunciation) + all letters rounded (cf. unbent)] unselfish [It's exactly like itself An oxymoron in fact.] BOTH truthful and untruthful unannotated [Would be truthful if I hadn't put this damn note here.] unavoidable [Some may avoid this word entirely--but they can't prove it without disproving it.] unbearable [Most people can tolerate this word--unless said of themselves!] unbent [Each letter contains a bend (compare unround) but the word is straight by definition.] unclassified [Not top secret, but classified as an adjective.] uncoined [Not coined just now but was in the past.] underwater [Not unless you're willing to wrinkle your Word Ways!]
(What's a derwater anyhow?) undisguised [This upfront word is disguised as a nonce verb anagram of the phrase "I undid guess."] uninflected [There's no such word as uninflect. But is it an inflection of inflect? I ask, ignorant.] unlisted [Listed in most dictionaries but not in some pocket
dictionaries nor in phone books, etc.] unscrambled
[Correct letter order but it's a scrambled scam blunder.] unspoken [Not spoken here, but easily falsifiable--if you say so.] NEITHER truthful nor untruthful untruthful
[True if it's false, false if it's true.] </pre> <p>ANIL
Perth, Australia
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| Author: | Anil |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Word Ways |
| Date: | Feb 1, 2006 |
| Words: | 367 |
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| The language of deception. |