Barbara Partee writes:
From this Sunday's Week in Review, Corrections:
A graphic last Sunday about health and safety issues misspelled the name of a new diagnosis for the shoulder pain caused by playing tennis on Wii, the video game console. It is acute Wiiitis, not Wiitis.
My father used to take pleasure when from his office window at the Glenn L. Martin Company (later Martin, then Martin Lockheed, then Martin Marietta, if I've got it straight) in Middle River, Md., he would occasionally see three trains simultaneously passing, and even greater pleasure in describing those happenings as "threeers", challenging us to try to find another word with three e's in a row. But 3 i's -- unimaginable -- I wish he were still alive to see that!! Wow!
[Update -- Arnold Zwicky joined several other readers in wondering why it wouldn't be "three-ers" (with hyphenation, as in "twee-est") or "threers" (with orthographic haplology, as in "freest").]
[Update #2 -- Geraint Jennings writes:
Any old excuse to quote Ogden Nash's Llama:
The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.*
*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.
]
[Update #3 -- Jonathan Falk asks:
Can one go Hawaiiing?
]
Posted by Mark Liberman at June 18, 2007 06:17 AM