56 | New Scientist | 28 November 2020
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Glimping a moist flange
Reflecting recently on the
overzealous censorship of
the proceedings of a scientific
conference by a prudish AI, we
called for professional help to
establish what it is about the
sound of words like “flange”
that makes them ripe for
double entendre (7 November).
Cometh the hour, cometh the
man: psycholinguist Chris Westbury
at the University of Alberta in
Canada, co-author of such papers
as “Telling the world’s least funny
jokes: On the quantification of
humor as entropy” and “Wriggly,
squiffy, lummox, and boobs: What
makes some words funny?”.
His central thesis, tested first on
made-up words, is that a word’s
intrinsic amusement factor is
related to the improbability of its
character combination, which can
be measured in terms of the word’s
contribution to the overall disorder,
or entropy, of the English language.
Broadly, words containing less
common sounds are rated as
funnier. Proffic, quingle, probble –
clearly funny. Chertin, screnta,
clester – not so much.
Feedback finds this explanation
entirely quixulubble, but what of
the rudeness factors of real words?
Here, Westbury’s work has enabled
many valuable insights. Words
containing an “oo” sound, for
example, are disproportionately
likely to be rated as funny and
also to have or to acquire – cause
and effect being not so readily
disentangled here – questionable
connotations. Well, screw our
fruity bloomers.
To circle back, perhaps
unwisely, to our starting point,
“flange” is only mildly funny
measured by its phonetic qualities,
barely scraping into the top quarter
of all English words, by Westbury’s
calculations. Some additional thesis
is required to account for its phnarf
factor – perhaps the other words
whose company it regularly
keeps, we speculate?
Westbury thinks not. “I have
been asked the same thing several
times about the word ‘moist’, whichfrom online services for fear
of upsetting the morals of the
wider world.
Many thanks for sending in
your own examples, although we
suspect many of these primarily
serve your own titillation at
writing rude-sounding words.
For pure silliness, we
commend Geoff Vaughan and
his email subject line “Nuclear
security”, auto-corrected to
“Nuclebottomcurity”, as well as
Rod Ward for his story of a police
choir’s conductor stymied in
sending material for a Christmas
carol concert. The problem?
Ding Dong Merrily on High.The mask slips
We draw breath with a headline
spotted by Jane Fisher on
Australia’s ABC News website
on 2 November: “Face wearingin Victoria will be part of life for
the foreseeable future.”Good cop, good cop
A frisson of delight ripples
through our inbox as many of you,
your attention no doubt drawn by
the recent focus on Philadelphia’s
extended presidential ballot-
counting process, point to the
city’s police commissioner,
Danielle Outlaw, who has
occasionally frequented this page.
We have a warm, fuzzy
glow, meanwhile, thanks to
the unexpected news that the
outgoing Trump administration’s
appointee as director of the next
National Climate Assessment is
not only an experienced climate
scientist, but also believes in the
reality of anthropogenic global
warming. Indeed, Betsy
Weatherhead seems admirably
qualified in every way.Don’t be negative...
Staying in the City of Sisterly
Love, as it has been re-nicknamed
in honour of the 100th anniversary
of the 19th Amendment to the US
constitution, Trump campaign
lawyer Jerome Marcus was pressed
on his claim that campaign
representatives weren’t being
allowed into the city’s election
count. Asked by judge Paul Diamond
whether any observers were
already there from the campaign,
Marcus replied: “There’s a non-zero
number of people in the room.”
It is an answer that Feedback
can just about justify if some of
those present were lawyers whose
tiresome arguments were sucking
life out of the room, effectively
creating a non-zero, negative
number of people.
Simultaneously – and, we can
only assume, coincidentally – our
attention is drawn to an advert for
Always Platinum sanitary towels,
claiming “up to zero leaks, up to
zero odours and up to zero
bunching”. Quite what their
suboptimal performance amounts
to, we would rather not speculate. ❚apparently many people find
rude,” he says. “Although its sexual
connotations are obvious, by far
the most common neighbours had
to do with cake.”
To humo(u)r us, though,
Westbury ran “flange” through
his semantic relations widget,
coming up with the following list:
flanges, crossmember, flanged,
ferrule, mounting flange, splined,
rubber grommet, piston rod,
mounting flanges, tensioner.
Goodness gracious, and all that
in a family magazine.The AI is a bottom
The basic problem of computer
prudery is, Feedback recalls,
known in the trade as the
Scunthorpe problem. It is named
after the town in Lincolnshire, UK,
residents of which have, from time
to time, found themselves cut offGot a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or
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