A six letter word, that when you take out its last letter, becomes half of its meaning. What word is it?

(In reply to literal? by Paul)

"I admit I like the idea of finding a word whose meaning after shortening is somehow 1/2 of the meaning of the original, but I've had zero luck in finding such a word."

But there's lots of words like that, if you merely rearrange the remaining 5 letters after removing the 6th....

"Superb" becomes "super" -- Something that is superb is twice as good as something that is merely "super".

"Scares" - remove the last letter (not the first) and rearrange the other 5, and you get "cares", which are only half as bad as "scares".

"Swords" becomes "words", and contrary to the old cliche, swords are twice as mighty as words.

"Theron" - becomes "other" -- and Oprah Winfrey said just yesterday that actress Charlize Theron is twice as pretty as any "other" woman.

"Soared" becomes "arose" -- if I soared, I got up twice as high as if I merely "arose", didn't I ?

"Stench" becomes "scent" -- even a bad scent is only half as bad as the average stench.

"Stones" becomes "Tones" (removing the last letter, not the first, and rearranging the remaining 5), and anyone who has ever hired the Cajun dance band "the Bone Tones" to entertain at a wedding, only paid half as much as they would have had to pay,  to hire the Rolling Stones.

"Samoan" becomes "Osama" -- okay, I'm not sure what to do with that one, without offending anyone.

"Streep" becomes "Steer" -- ask Roger Ebert if Meryl Streep isn't twice the actress Caroline Steer is.

The possibilities are endless.....

[Obviously these are silly jokes, not serious solutions to the puzzle...]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited on October 1, 2005, 6:29 pm

Posted by Penny on 2005-10-01 16:16:22