Insignificant Word Trivia

Can anyone think of a word other than hitchhike (and derivatives) that has a double-h?

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8 thoughts on “Insignificant Word Trivia

  1. The one that I have occasionally seen is, like hitchhike, a compound word: highhat. I have seen it much more often hyphenated, however.

    Somehow it doesn’t look correct all run together. You’ll have to check with the percussionists in your audience on whether the run-together form is an acceptable alternative.

  2. I seem to recall you’re a Mac user. This probably works on Linux also. There’s a dictionary in /usr/share/dict/words which allows us the wonder of the magic of grep:

    grep hh /usr/share/dict/words

    withheld/withhold seems like a good candidate. A lot of the other ones seem like they’re really hyphenated words.

    Of course, this assumes the Gordian mindset that the answer matters more than the process of acquiring the answer.

  3. How about hathair?

    Squirrely just got back from visiting his kangaroo rat friends in the desert and finds himself with the above-mentioned affliction.

  4. Interesting thought … withhold has the double h, but threshold doesn’t, even though it started as a compound word for a raised door-sill to hold in material on a threshing floor — a thresh-hold.

  5. One of my dictionaries lists a bunch of compounds formed with half; one is run together, many are hyphenated (maybe someday they’ll be regarded as single words), and some remain separate words…

    halfhearted

    half-hard
    half-holiday
    half-hour
    (and many more; half-harvested, half-healed, half-harvested, half-hidden, half-human, etc.)

    half hitch
    half hose

    Jer mentioned withhold/withholding; according to one dictionary I’m looking at withhold/withholding/withholder are single words, so they work

    Bathhouse, of course, is good

    Latch hook is two words.

    Switch hitter or switch-hitter/switch-hit doesn’t quite make the cut.

    Fleshhook is one word and would be good in a horror novel or one set in a meat-processing plant.

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