The Babblemumble Cube
The shape of words
I got email yesterday that someone had commented on a blog from the distant past (it turned out, alas, to have been spam). Looking at that blog, I found an old article of mine that I want to share again. Here it is, lightly edited.
While walking my dog, I was talking to him, as one does. I was just babbling. I was also mumbling. I thought there should be a nice portmanteau word combining babbling and mumbling. Both end with “bling”, so the first three letters have two choices: the first letter is either m or b, the second u or a, the third either m or b again.
That situation can be nicely drawn as a cube, shown here. Of the eight possibilities, two are already words: bubbling and bumbling. But the one I like best is bambling. I don’t know, it just feels right: bambling. It ought to be a word.
In this drawing, the word bubbling is hiding in the back lower-left, where it can’t be seen. Here are eight versions of the cube, identifying the corner where each word lives:
When I was drawing these pictures, it occurred to me that I was also rambling. This word extends the pattern, where now the first letter can be m or b or r. This means we get to draw a bigger picture. So for extra credit, draw the new shape that contains all 16 combinations of babbling, mumbling, and rambling. No fair using AI to do it for you!
Fun, I like the idea of spatially graphing language.