Word challenge

**Savage** · 07-11-2005, 12:53

I haven't been posting here much lately, but some friends and I saw this in the paper and I immediately thought of posting it here, because I know there are some people here who enjoy and are good at this sort of thing:

A word that when you add an "a" to the front of it becomes a plural synonym of itself.

A puzzled over it for a few hours before giving up, and a friend of mine's mother came up with a decent answer, which I'll post later if anyone's interested.

**Geeno** · 07-11-2005, 13:20

Plural synonym?

What exactly are you trying to say?

**gaoneng** · 07-11-2005, 17:15

My guess is "new" and "anew". But I'm not really convinced that that's a good answer meself. I'll go to sleep now. Maybe I'll wake up to a better answer.

**Matt** · 07-11-2005, 17:38

All I can come up with off the top of my head is "symptomatic" to "asyptomatic"...but thats not a plural synonym... so I lose this game.

**Ikeren** · 07-11-2005, 21:33

For the plural synonym thing, it would be something like this

Word 1) Apple
Word 2) Word that means more then one apple (APPLES)

Except that is adding an S at the end not an A at the start.

As for the actually word, it isn't really a riddle so much as a question of how large your vocabulary is and how quick you remember every word you've ever seen or heard.

I am browsing through words that start with A in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, but since I don't have 10 hours, I guess I'll just say:

Remove an A from one of these words...

Abdelkader
abderian
abderite
Abdias
abdicate
abdomen
abdominoplasty
abdominous
abduce
abducens nerve
abducent
abducent nerve
abduct
abductee
abduction

Quote has approximately 80 billion words both before and after it.

**Dondrei** · 07-11-2005, 21:47

I'm assuming this word is a noun because otherwise the plural thing makes no sense.

**Merick** · 07-11-2005, 22:11

Kawaii, come make us another dictionary-searching dictionary program again :o

We need a list of every word that becomes a new word when you add an 'a' to the beginning.

**Savage** · 08-11-2005, 01:46

Oh dear, I screwed up.

I totally omitted the fact that the word had to be 3 letters long, 4 letters when you add the a to the front.

Sorry guys, I feel a little stupid now.

K so, to clarify the problem is in fact:
A 3-letter word that when you add an "a" to the front of it becomes a plural synonym of itself.

So a plural synonym is a word that means the same thing but is pluralised, like player and contestants. Contestant is a synonym of player, and contestants is pluralised.