Eodermdrome

An eodermdrome is a form of word play wherein a word (or phrase) is formed from a set of letters (or words) in such a way that it has a non-planar spelling net. The eodermdrome was conceived and described by Gary S. Bloom, John W. Kennedy, and Peter J. Wexler in Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics in 1980.[1]

It is well illustrated by the word eodermdrome itself. Eodermdrome contains only the letters e, o, d, r and m. When plotted as a graph, the lettered vertices are sequentially connected by edges to spell a word. If the graph is non-planar, the word is an eodermdrome. The graph of eodermdrome is the non-planar graph K5.

Eckler searched for all eodermdromes in Webster's Dictionary.[2] One of his examples is supersaturates. The graph of the complete word contains the non-planar graph K3,3 as a subgraph and is, as such, itself non-planar.

By extension, the vertices can be identified with words instead of letters to form eodermdromic phrases or sentences.

The concept has been studied within both mathematics and linguistics.[3][4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bloom, Gary S.; Kennedy, John W.; Wexler, Peter J. (August 1980). "Ensnaring the Elusive Eodermdrome". Word Ways 13 (3): 131–140.
  2. ↑ Eckler, A. Ross (August 1980). "Dictionary Eodermdromes". Word Ways 13 (3): 141–146.
  3. ↑ Bloom, Gary S.; Kennedy, John W.; Quintas, Louis V. (1983). "On Crossing Numbers and Linguistic Structures". Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1018: 14–22. doi:10.1007/BFb0071606.
  4. ↑ Kennedy, John W.; Wexler, Peter J.; Bloom, Gary S. (1980). "Linguistic Complexity and Minimal Eodermdromes". Linguistics 18 (1-2): 3–16. doi:10.1515/ling.1980.18.1-2.3.
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