Hi all!  I know that we usually don't talk about things other than ferrets,
but when I saw Dayna's request for an answer to a riddle that I knew, I
couldn't resist!  Well here it is: There are three English words that end
with -gry.  Two of them are "hungry" and "angry." What's the third?
 
This riddle is answered in a book called "Return of the Straight Dope" by
Cecil Adams. He writes,
>       The word "gry", meaning "one tenth of a line"-not as one might
>guess in these degraded times a unit of measurement in the drug trade,
>but rather part of the decimal system of linear measurement proposed by
>English philosophoer John Locke (1632-1704). A gry was a hundredth of an
>inch and a thousandth of a "philosophical foot." Too bad Locke's idea didn't
>catch on; the thought of measuring things in philosophical feet has an
>ineffable poignance. The Oxford English Dictionalry says gry is also and
>obsolete verb meaning "to rage or roar."
>       But wait. Lest you think ther is only one right answer to the
>truly cosmic questions of life, I should advise you of the exsistance of
>"puggry", and "aggry," which also full the bill. Puggry is and alternate
>spelling of "puggree," meaning either and Indian turban or a scarf wound
>around a sun helmet with the end hanging down in back as a shade. An
>aggry bead, according to my "Webster's Third," is a "variegated glass
>bead found buried in the earth in Ghana and England." As with many
>enigmatic dictionary definitions, this leaves one abubble with questions:
>who buried them? And why Ghana and England? Sadly, we must defer the
>amazing answer till some later date.
 
sorry to take up so much space, but I stay awake at nights if I can't
figure out a riddle :)
 
Michelle
 
Kina & Kobi <The ferrets>
[Posted in FML issue 1593]