1. If Little Miss Muffet is LMM, who are these other abbreviated nursery rhymers?Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet. Everybody knows that—but do they know what TUFFET means? Most sources suggest the perch to be a low stool, with the ‘tuft’ a bunch of threads sewn through a cushion to secure the padding. Tuffet may also mean a grassy mound, just as a church’s kneeler—or HASSOCK— derives from Middle English hassuc, or coarse grass.
The mound idea is boosted by the link to TUFF, a volcanic rock of cemented ash. Closely related is the confusing cousin of TUFA , a porous mass of calcium carbonate typically found near mineral springs. Both words (or perhaps all three) come from tufo in Latin, meaning loose, pumice-like stone.
Getting back to calcium, there was plenty in Miss Muffet’s breakfast. CURD is coagulated milk, a substance once labelled as CRUD. Of course the same word was borrowed in postwar America to mean filth. Thanks to curd’s clotted quality, the term also gives us CROWD and CURDLE (to congeal).
As for WHEY, that’s the watery solution found in milk, an old English word that’s not so high on the modern breakfast menu. Curiously, the vital fluid in our bloodstream, the one to carry proteins and antibodies, is known as SERUM, the Latin word for whey.
1. If Little Miss Muffet is LMM, who are these other abbreviated nursery rhymers?
(a) LB-P _____________________________
(b) LBB _____________________________
(c) JAJ _____________________________
(d) WWW _____________________________
(e) GGG _____________________________
(f) LJH _____________________________
(g) LTT _____________________________
(h) OKC _____________________________
(i) HD _____________________________
(j) MM (QC) _____________________________
(k) OMH _____________________________
(l) JS _____________________________
(m) GP _____________________________
(n) DF _____________________________
(o) SS _____________________________
2. Arachnophobes like Miss Muffet fear spiders. Are you brave enough to link each ‘phobe’ on the left-hand side with their specific dread on the right?
| algophobe | clouds |
| barophobe | glass |
| brontophobe | gravity |
| genophobe | nudity |
| gymnophobe | pain |
| hodophobe | sex |
| laliophobe | stuttering |
| nelophobe | thunder |
| nephophobe | travel |