I'm late to the party on this one, but I just found out
about kangaroo words. According to dictionary.com, a kangaroo word is a "word
that contains its own synonym, with the letters to spell that synonym already placed
in the correct order." WHAT?? Maybe it's a side effect of it being month
eleventy-five of the pandemic, but I think this is so cool!
The letters can be consecutive, like act within action,
or spread out, like male in masculine. And to continue with the
word play, those shorter synonyms inside of a kangaroo word are
called joey words. Methinks Kanga and Roo would be pleased.
I'm a bit dismayed that I didn't learn about kangaroo words
in grade school. Had I been made aware of this bit of language nerdiness around
the time I discovered The Phantom Tollbooth, my eight-year-old head surely
would have exploded (in a good way). Kangaroo words were popularized as a word
game in the 1950s, in The American Magazine, and later appeared in Reader's
Digest. Then, I suppose, they just faded away.
For you serious word geeks out there, a twin kangaroo
contains two joey words, such as container, in which both tin and
can appear. Want more? An anti-kangaroo (is it just me, or does that sound
like a political party that would appear in a Monty Python sketch?) contains its
own antonym, like overt in covert. And the finale? A grand
kangaroo contains two joey words, one of which is in the "pouch" of the other,
such as alone, which contains lone, which contains one.
Mind. Blown.
Word play will always be fun for a certain segment of the
population. I just hope that enough of us are passing that sense of play along
to future generations. Wouldn't Kanga want us to?
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