[Verbivore]

B y  R I C H A R D  L E D E R E R

Words About
Our Presidents


what American president had a letter as a full middle name?

The answer is Harry S Truman.

Truman's parents named him Harry, after his uncle Harrison, but they gave him no middle name so that both his grandfathers -- Solomon Young and Anderson Shipp Truman -- could claim he was named for them. This practice was not uncommon among the Scotch-Irish.

In 1902, an issue of The Washington Star carried a cartoon, drawn by Clifford Berryman, of President Theodore Roosevelt. T. R. stood rifle in hand with his back turned toward a cowering cub. The caption read, "Drawing the line in Mississippi!"

The reference was to a hunting expedition Roosevelt had recently taken in Mississippi. The president's hosts had trapped a bear cub for him to kill, but Roosevelt had refused to fire. Berryman's drawing received nationwide publicity, and it inspired a 32-year-old Russian-immigrant toy salesman from Brooklyn, one Morris Michtom, to make a stuffed copy of the bear cub for children. The fad caught on, and the dolls became known as teddy bears, in honor of our our 26th president.

As the year progresses and we think more and more presidentially, try your hand at the following quiz, which touches on some wordy and literary facts about our chief executives. The first reader who e-mails five correct answers will win a $25 gift certificate for Borders Books and Music.


1. Identify the president who observed, "It's a damn small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."

2. Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of such American classics as "The Scarlet Letter," died on a canoe trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, accompanied by which president?

3. The Chicago Times review of a presidential speech had this to say: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterances of the man who has been pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the president of the United States."

Who was the president and what was the speech?

4. Identify the president in the following conversation:

PRESIDENT'S WIFE: I'm sorry I missed the sermon. What was it about?

PRESIDENT: Sin.

WIFE: What did the minister say about it?

PRESIDENT: He was against it.


5. After whom was the Baby Ruth candy bar named?

6. With what president is this bit of doggerel associated?:

Ma! Ma!

Where's my pa?

Gone to the White House --

Ha! Ha! Ha!


7. Being from the Midwest, this president often talked to farm groups. Whenever he held forth about fertilizer, he used the word manure, much to the embarrassment of his support staff. When the public relations people went to his wife to ask her help in getting the president to stop using the offending word, she sighed, "You'd be amazed how long it took me to get [him] to start using manure."

Identify that president.

Please enter your full name

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The winner of the last Verbivore Challenge, "What's in a President's name? was John McNamee, who correctly guessed the answers to the following questions::

1. By the time they became president, two chief executives had deleted their first names. List the original full name of each of these men.

Answer: Stephen Grover Cleveland and John Calvin Coolidge

2. What president simply reversed the order of his first and middle names?

Answer: Dwight David Eisenhower

3. In what president's first name appears the last name, with the letters in order, of a later president?

Answer: Rutherford B. Hayes -- Ford


Language expert Richard Lederer's latest book is "Pun and Games," wordplay for kids. He comments on language for National Public Radio and other radio stations and is the Grammar Grappler for Writer's Digest. He can be reached at rlederer@tiac.net. Visit the newly-erected Verbivore web site at http://www.tiac.net/users/rlederer/index.htm


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