A riddle that'll kill your brain?

Question

This is going to make you mad.
There are only 3 words in the english language that end in "gry"
One is angry and the other hungry.
Whay is it? ___gry?

I got asked this riddel and for the life of me i can't get the 3rd word, so please help

Answer 1

This 'riddle' has been circulating in email for years now, in various forms of words, and had appeared in print media before that. Dictionary and reference departments the world over have been plagued by questions about it. It seems to have originated as a trick question, but the wording has become so garbled in subsequent transmission that it is hard to tell what was originally intended.

The most probable answer is that, in the original wording, the question was phrased something like this:

Think of words ending in -gry. 'Angry' and 'hungry' are two of them. What is the third word in the English language? You use it every day, and if you were listening carefully, I've just told you what it is.
The answer, of course, is 'language' (the third word in 'the English language').

There are several other English words ending in -gry which are listed in the complete Oxford English Dictionary, but none of them could be described as common. They include the trivial oddities un-angry and a-hungry, and

aggry: aggry beads, according to various 19th-century writers, are coloured glass beads found buried in the ground in parts of Africa.
begry: a 15th-century spelling of beggary.
conyngry: a 17th-century spelling of the obsolete word conynger, meaning 'rabbit warren', which survives in old English field names such as 'Conery' and 'Coneygar'.
gry: the name for a hundredth of an inch in a long-forgotten decimal system of measurement devised by the philosopher John Locke (and presumably pronounced to rhyme with 'cry').
higry-pigry: an 18th-century rendition of the drug hiera picra.
iggry: an old army slang word meaning 'hurry up', borrowed from Arabic.
meagry: a rare obsolete word meaning 'meagre-looking'.
menagry: an 18th-century spelling of menagerie.
nangry: a rare 17th-century spelling of angry.
podagry: a 17th-century spelling of podagra, a medical term for gout.
puggry: a 19th-century spelling of the Hindi word pagri (in English usually puggaree or puggree), referring either to a turban or to a piece of cloth worn around a sun-helmet.
skugry: 16th-century spelling of the dialect word scuggery meaning 'secrecy' (the faint echo of 'skulduggery' is quite accidental!).

Answer 2

Found this answer to the riddle for you online:

For reasons that we can’t determine, the "-gry question" is turning up again and again from our patrons. The best and most comprehensive answer to it comes from the Stumpers discussion list for reference librarians, and we quote from it below.

Here is the question in its correct "puzzle" form. "Think of words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everybody uses everyday. If you have listened carefully , I’ve already told you what it is."

The secret here is that the real question is "There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word?" That is, there are only three words in the phrase "the English language". The third word is "language", which is indeed something we use every day. The first two words are "the" and "English".

Wondering if anyone has found any other ways to play this game? Fun With Words.com has eight different answers to the -gry riddle.

Having found the answer to the actual riddle, however, you may still wonder if there are any other English words ending in -gry. There are. The intrepid reference librarians of Stumpers found the following answers to the question:

For a very long list of -gry words, including places and other proper names, see the Solution to the /language/english/spelling/gry problem in the rec.puzzles Usenet group’s Language Puzzles Archive.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, five words in the English language end in -gry. In addition to the common angry and hungry:

aggry, a glass bead found buried in the earth in Ghana.
puggry, a light scarf wound around a hat or helmet to protect the head from the sun, and
meagry, of meager appearance.

Answer 3

The answer is quite simple. The riddle is worded incorrectly, having been mangled by too many people as it has been passed along. It should read as follows:

************************
Angry and hungry are two words in the English language that end in 'gry.' There are three words in the English language. What is the third word? Everyone knows what it means and everyone uses it every day. Look closely and I have already given you the third word. What is it?

************************

The answer is not even remotely related to the words that end in "gry." That is thrown in to confuse people. The important sentences are the second and third ones. The first sentence states the fact that there are three words in "the English language." The third sentence asks you what is the third word in "the English language." The answer is "language," since it is the third word in the riddle phrase of "the English language."

Answer 4

Gry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Gry (disambiguation).
The -Gry Puzzle is a popular puzzle that asks for the third English word, other than "angry" and "hungry," that ends with the letters "gry." Aside from words derived from "angry" and "hungry," there is no stand-alone word ending in "gry" that is in current usage. Both Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2002, ISBN 0877792011) and the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 0198611862) contain the phrase "aggry bead." To find a third word ending in "gry" that is not part of a phrase, you must turn to obsolete words or personal or place names. A list of 130 of these is given at the end of this article.

This puzzle has no good answer, yet it has become the most frequently asked word puzzle. The regular readers of the Usenet newsgroup rec.puzzles have coined the word "nugry" to describe a (presumably) new reader who posts a frequently asked question.

Answer 5

The correct form of this riddle is:

“Think of words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses everyday. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.”


Hey, check out this site:

http://www.classbrain.com/artaskcb/publish/article_53.shtml

It'll explain the answer.

Answer 6

You are told wrong! There isn't one!

This 'riddle' has been circulating in email for years now, in various forms of words, and had appeared in print media before that. Dictionary and reference departments the world over have been plagued by questions about it. It seems to have originated as a trick question, but the wording has become so garbled in subsequent transmission that it is hard to tell what was originally intended.

The most probable answer is that, in the original wording, the question was phrased something like this:

Think of words ending in -gry. 'Angry' and 'hungry' are two of them. What is the third word in the English language? You use it every day, and if you were listening carefully, I've just told you what it is.

The answer, of course, is 'language' (the third word in 'the English language').

There are several other English words ending in -gry which are listed in the complete Oxford English Dictionary, but none of them could be described as common. They include the trivial oddities un-angry and a-hungry, and

* aggry: aggry beads, according to various 19th-century writers, are coloured glass beads found buried in the ground in parts of Africa.
* begry: a 15th-century spelling of beggary.
* conyngry: a 17th-century spelling of the obsolete word conynger, meaning 'rabbit warren', which survives in old English field names such as 'Conery' and 'Coneygar'.
* gry: the name for a hundredth of an inch in a long-forgotten decimal system of measurement devised by the philosopher John Locke (and presumably pronounced to rhyme with 'cry').
* higry-pigry: an 18th-century rendition of the drug hiera picra.
* iggry: an old army slang word meaning 'hurry up', borrowed from Arabic.
* meagry: a rare obsolete word meaning 'meagre-looking'.
* menagry: an 18th-century spelling of menagerie.
* nangry: a rare 17th-century spelling of angry.
* podagry: a 17th-century spelling of podagra, a medical term for gout.
* puggry: a 19th-century spelling of the Hindi word pagri (in English usually puggaree or puggree), referring either to a turban or to a piece of cloth worn around a sun-helmet.
* skugry: 16th-century spelling of the dialect word scuggery meaning 'secrecy' (the faint echo of 'skulduggery' is quite accidental!).

Answer 7

Dangit, I'm so freakin' tired of this riddle!!! There is no actual word that ends in "gry" other than angry & hungry. There can be like 50,000 answers to this riddle, but it has to be asked the right way.

Answer 8

The word is gry, meaning anything very small, or of little value.

Answer 9

I am hungry.~~~> you said 3 words in the english language.

Answer 10

third word in statement : ONLY