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Frequentative is a term from grammar, one that I only learned about a couple of days ago while watching the Words Unravelled podcast. A frequentative is a word formed by appending the suffix -le or -er to a verb or noun to express the idea of a repeated action. Here are some examples with -le

spark -> sparkle

prick -> prickle

game -> gamble

daze -> dazzle

crumb -> crumble

fizz -> fizzle

scud -> scuttle

twink (same as wink) -> twinkle

wag-> waggle

This suffix derives from an old Germanic suffix with a similar meaning.

Here are some examples with -er. These are less clear cut sometimes, because the suffix can have other senses.

gleam -> glimmer

slide -> slither

flit -> flitter

The word frequentative sounded fairly modern to me, but in fact it is recorded in the grammatical sense as early as 1534, in Nicholas Udall's Floures for Latine spekynge selected and gathered oute of Terence 

The London Eye, by Image Creator (2024)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crouton_skibidis_next_to_an_ice_cube.jpg

'Crouton' and 'crystal' both ultimately stem from an ancient root that was something like kreus and meant 'freezing over' or 'crusting'. Crystals were thought in Ancient Greece (not unreasonably) to resemble frost, kryos, and from that was derived krystallos.

Related words are crust, crustacean, a whole series of modern words coined from cryo-, and, surprisingly, custard.

“My job is studying social insects”, said Tom observantly.

From a French word meaning a bag, from Latin and before that from Gaulish. It derives ultimately from a PIE root meaning something like to swell. Many other words have the same root; for example, ball, balloon, bale, bulge and surprisingly, ballot. Apparently, balls were once used for casting votes.

I thought I’d try shoplifting. But they were too heavy for me.

I found this striking fungus in my garden today. I believe it is Armillaria tabescens, the ringless honey fungus, but it's hard to be certain. Rather beautiful.

In one of the Inspector Morse books, Lewis repeats to himself the mnemonic "Five 'esses' in 'possess'". I can't trace the quote, but I think Lewis must have needed to use the word in a report and felt nervous in case he spelt it wrongly. (The first book in the series was published in 1975, pre-spellcheckers). 

I thought I would test an AI on this, so I asked Copilot. It said four esses. So I tried to correct it and it said rather patronisingly:

• • P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S

1. 1. P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
   2. P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
   3. P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
   4. P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S

• • Assesses
  • Assassins
  • Assessors
  • Possesses
  • Sassiness
  • ...

Something that has fascinate me for many years is the fact that, if a disordered systems is larges enough, it will tend to contain pockets of unavoidable regularity. Order will emerge from disorder.

For example, imagine we colour every point of the 2D plane in one of two colours, red or blue say. Then there will inevitably be equilateral triangles all three of whose vertices are the same colour; either all red or all blue. Here's how we can prove this.

Imagine we set out to colour the plane in a way that avoids a monochromatic equilateral triangle. We shall find that this is impossible. Consider the following steps in our attempt.

We start with two points which are coloured red (Step 1).This must be possible; if not, there would no more than one red point in the entire plane, so either all equilateral triangles would be blue monochromatic, or all the ones that avoided the single red point would be. Either way our attempt to avoid monochromatic equilateral triangles would have failed spectacularly.

At Step 2 both the ringed points will have to be coloured blue, otherwise one or both the triangles marked will be red monochromatic.

At Step 3 the ringed point will have to be coloured red, otherwise the triangle marked will be blue monochromatic.

At Step 4 the ringed point will have to be coloured blue, otherwise the triangle marked will be red monochromatic.

At Step 5 a monochromatic triangle can no longer be avoided; whether we choose red or blue for the uncoloured point a monochromatic triangle with be created.

There really is such a word, it's in the the Oxford English Dictionary.

First recorded in 1881, it is the only words I have come across in the OED that lists a citation from Twitter:

Do you know a Hrothgar? I bet you do…

Hrothgar was a semi-mythical Danish king who appears in several places in Old English and Old Norse literature. His name is dithematic – it consists of two elements hroth + gar, meaning ‘famous’ and ‘spear’.

Many Germanic names follow this dithematic pattern and there are hundreds, possibly thousands of examples attested. Many survive in modified form to the present day and are very common and familiar given names, for instance

William - will + helm = ‘wish helmet’

Mathilda -  maht + hild = ‘mighty battle’

Rosamund - hros + mund = ‘horse guardian

Robert -  hroth +  beraht = ‘famous bright’

Several of these elements are easy to recognise – will, maht, hros, beraht - and helm survives as a poetical word for helmet. mund was still found in Middle English but is now obsolete, and hild seems to have disappeared earlier.

As for Hrothgar, it has become Roger, a fact I only realised a couple of days ago. Hroth is an element in several other names: Wikipedia quotes Rudolph, Roderick, and Roland; but seems extinct now except in names.

But gar = ‘pike’ i.e.a long, pointed spear, hangs on. This is a garfish, courtesy of Wikipedia.

My daughter sent me a list of "groaners" she found somewhere on the web. 

Here are three I rather liked:

I felt it my duty to contribute to this genre, so here are some I came up with: