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:
I see where the confusion might be! Let’s break it down again:
P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
Counting the S’s:
P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
P-O-S-S-E-S-S-E-S
There are four S’s in “possesses.” It can be tricky with the double S’s, but I hope this clears it up! 😊
So next I asked for some words with five esses in, and now it "knows" the right answer:
Sure! Here are some words that contain five S’s:
Assesses
Assassins
Assessors
Possesses
Sassiness
...
The reason it got it wrong in the first case is presumably an artefact of the way it parses questions but I don't understand it properly. It's interesting though; these language models can often come up with very useful answers, and they are mosy impressive, but they are also fallible in unexpeted ways.
By the way the OED lists the word possessionlessness, cited first from 1905. This manages a whopping 8 esses and may be the record. Copilot claims the number is seven. And perhaps there is a pattern here: in response to possessionlessnesses (not in the OED but found in an internet search) it says eight. I'll leave you to try some more experiments. I have to stop now because I've used up all the questions I can ask Copilot in this session.
How Many Esses on "Possesses"?
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:
I see where the confusion might be! Let’s break it down again:
Counting the S’s:
There are four S’s in “possesses.” It can be tricky with the double S’s, but I hope this clears it up! 😊
Sure! Here are some words that contain five S’s:
- Assesses
- Assassins
- Assessors
- Possesses
- Sassiness
- ...
The reason it got it wrong in the first case is presumably an artefact of the way it parses questions but I don't understand it properly. It's interesting though; these language models can often come up with very useful answers, and they are mosy impressive, but they are also fallible in unexpeted ways.By the way the OED lists the word possessionlessness, cited first from 1905. This manages a whopping 8 esses and may be the record. Copilot claims the number is seven. And perhaps there is a pattern here: in response to possessionlessnesses (not in the OED but found in an internet search) it says eight. I'll leave you to try some more experiments. I have to stop now because I've used up all the questions I can ask Copilot in this session.