wht r 3 wrds that end in gry?

Question

theres hungry,angry. i got this from an email

Answer 1

There is no third word in the English language. It is a trick question.

Answer 2

Those Dreaded "-gry" Words

For years and years and years, librarians have been fielding questions such as, "I heard there are three commonly used English words ending in '-gry'. I know about 'hungry' and 'angry', but what is the other word?"

This question is asked many, many times, every month, every year, and has been asked for as many years as anyone who works at this particular library can remember. If we seem to you be somewhat less than thrilled to hear the "-gry" riddle, it is because, to use a massive understatement, the novelty has worn off. So far, we have found many answers, the two most common of which we've posted below.

That being said, please understand that "words ending in gry" is the one topic on which Tempe Public Library does not respond to email. Here is one reason, quoted from the Frequently Asked Questions file of the rec.puzzles newsgroup: "There are many generally unsatisfying "trick" answers to the problem, which depend on a specific wording of the question or that the question be spoken instead of written. There seems to be no agreement among puzzle historians about which form is the original, or even the age of the problem. In any event, it is apparent that the frequent mutations of the puzzle statement over the years have erased whatever answer was intended by the original author." The other reason we don't answer email about -gry words is that we are already busy providing library service for the people who live in Tempe, Arizona. For two answers to the riddle, just read on:

Answer Number One:

Here one answer, in a nutshell, quoted from "Gry, Gry, Everywhere, and Not a Clue In Sight", from The Word Detective, the online version of Words, Wit and Wisdom, a newspaper column that answers readers' questions about words and language, and is currently syndicated in newspapers in the U.S., Mexico and Japan. Here is the gist of what its author has to say:

Perhaps the whole puzzler is more a grade school antic than anything else. The way I heard the setup for the question was this:

There are three words in the English language that end with "gry." One is hungry and the other is angry. What is the third word? Everyone uses this word every day, everyone knows what it means, and knows what it stands for. If you have listened very closely I have already told you the third word.

If you read the second sentence you see that the "third" word is "hungry".

The author is writing here about the third word in the second sentence of the riddle, exactly as quoted, NOT some mythical third commonly used English word ending in "-gry". We admit this is a rather stupid riddle, but then we we didn't make it up; we just answer it, over, and over, and over.

The Word Detective may be found on the web at http://www.word-detective.com.

Answer Number Two:

The other answer also involves the way in which the riddle is posed, and will work only when spoken. It goes like this: "There are at least three commonly-used English words ending in 'g' or 'y'. One is 'hungry', the other is "angry'..." and so on. After the victim has been given time to be driven sufficiently nuts, the riddler is supposed to reveal the magic word, 'or', which, of course, sounded like 'r' in the spoken riddle. This one was reported in Marilyn Vos Savant's column, "Ask Marilyn", in the Parade supplement to the March 9, 1997 issue of the Arizona Republic.

...And For the Terminally Curious:

Click here to see an exhaustive list of un-common English words ending in "-gry", posted in the rec.puzzles archive.

Answer 3

Taken at face value, the -gry question can be researched like any other. The most widely quoted source for words with the suffix -gry is the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition), which lists six words in addition to angry and hungry: aggry, a glass bead found buried in the soil of Ghana; anhungry, a word used by Shakespeare to mean "not hungry"; meagry, of meager appearance; podagry, gout in the feet; puggry, an alternate spelling for puggree, a light scarf worn around a hat or helmet to protect one's head from the sun; and gry itself, a word meaning variously "the grunt of a pig," "the dirt under a fingernail," "the veriest trifle," or "to rage, roar." Some of these unusual words from the OED may also be found in dictionaries of American English; in particular, Webster's Third International Dictionary of the English Language and Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary

Answer 4

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 0-87779-201-1) and the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-19-861186-2) contain the compound word "aggry bead." To find a third word ending in -gry that is not part of a phrase, you must turn to archaic, obsolete, or uncommon words, or personal or place names, a comprehensive list of which is given at the end of this article.

Answer 5

Actually, many words end in -gry, including gry itself, although all but angry and hungry are rare, foreign, obscure or obsolete.The most common "answers" are aggry, a burial bead from Ghana, puggry, a scarf worn around the neck in India to protect the head from the sun, and anhungry, an obsolete form of hungry that was used once in one of Shakespeare's less-popular plays (Coriolanus, Act I, Scene I, line 209); this association with the Bard is enough to earn it a place in Merriam-Webster's Third New International (unabridged) Dictionary of the English Language.

M

Answer 6

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.
( --Ann Landers column, in response to question what word besides angry and hungry ends in -gry. Daily Breeze (Torrance CA) 1/31/89; also in Los Angeles Times1/31/89 p. V8.)

William Safire in What’s the Good Word (1982) says the question is a hoax, intended to waste the questionee’s time. He quotes David Guralnik, editor of Simon & Schuster’s Webster’s New World Dictionary as saying there are no other "native English words" so ending, except angry and hungry. Guralnik notes three imported words:

puggry -- an Indian turban; a scarf worn around a sun helmet.
mawgry -- from Old French: being regarded with displeasure.
aggry -- colored glass beads worn by Africans.
RQ, spring 1976, with 12 responses to a fall 1975 question, listed aggry ("describes a certain type of variegated glass bead found buried in the earth in Ghana and in England"), citing Webster’s Third and OED, puggry, a variant spelling of puggree ("a light scarf wound around a hat or helmet to protect the head from the sun"), citing OED, Webster’s 2d, and Funk and Wagnall’s Crossword Puzzle Word Finder.

The same article also listed gry itself (obsolete, "the grunt of a pig, the dirt under the nail; hence the veriest trifle," further explained as "the smallest unit in Locke’s proposed decimal system of linear measurement, being the tenth of a line, the hundredth of an inch, and the thousandth of a [’philosophical’] foot."), citing OED, also in Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary of the English Language and Funk and Wagnall’s New Standard Dictionary.

More about -gry ... if you care

Hungry. Aside from angry, the only other common English word that ends in -gry. For reasons unclear, the commonest query that is addressed to the editors at the G.C. Merriam Company goes like this: "There are three English words that end in -gry. Hungry and angry are two of them, what is the third?" Among the 450,000 entries in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, there is only one other, which is anhungry, an obsolete word for hungry that is allowed to stay in the dictionary because it shows up in Shakespeare. (Coriolanus. I:i:209.) Editors at Merriam have found a few others buried deep within the OED, usually as variant spellings. One is puggry, one of several spellings of pugaree (also pugree, puggree, puggaree), which is a scarf wound around a sun helmet.

-- Dickson, Paul. Words. New York: Delacorte Pr., 1982. p. 194-195.

Answer 7

Depends...actually there are two English words (in addition to "hungry" and "angry" that end in -gry:
Aggry = a type of prehistoric bead (in Webster's Third Unabridged Dictionary)
Gry = a small distance (in the Oxford English Dictionary)

Neither word is a common word, of course.

Answer 8

The email reads (I think you will find) There are three words in 'The English Lanuage' and a different sentence describes the words that end in gry. The three words in the English Language ARE: The, English and Language

Answer 9

I was so angry.......my hungry search for the aggry just a gry from the village.

Answer 10

If you do a search on gry there are already 317 copies of this question in the system

Your answer is there