c4countdown

1) Are there any words which take -S, -ED and -ING but are not verbs?
2) Are there any which take -ER and -EST but are not adjectives?
3) Should HOTELIEST be added to Jimdic?

Charlie Reams wrote:2) Are there any which take -ER and -EST but are not adjectives?

HOTELI

Dinos Sfyris wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:2) Are there any which take -ER and -EST but are not adjectives?

HOTELI

That's US spelling, you mean HOTELLY.

Charlie Reams wrote:2) Are there any which take -ER and -EST but are not adjectives?

TITF.

Phil Reynolds wrote:TITF

If there is no plagiarism involved in that, I salute you as a giant of modern English literature.

How about EARN for number 2?

[Edits]

And one of buddies has just come up with TEMP, for the same puzzle...

For Question 1 there are a bunch of possibilities which are technically solutions due to the dropping of the final letter "E" when forming a present participle, but I'm not sure these are really within the spirit of the question. CAR is one which seems to fit the bill in this respect, since CARS, CARED and CARING are all words, but CAR itself is not a verb (at least I can't think of a sense in which CAR is a verb).

[End Edits]

EARN and TEMP are pretty good. I haven't really got to thinking about this myself much yet.

For 2, TAM and SPARS are pretty rubbish answers as they just make forms of TAME and SPARSE but happen to be nouns without the E.
All I can find are rubbish answers right now though and I wanted to be involved.

For 1, how about B? *chortle chortle*

Ok, for 1: LAVENDER. LAVENDERED and LAVENDERING are both valid but I can find no reference to LAVENDER being a verb, though I can't find any other explanation for this other than that it secretly is.

Matt Morrison wrote:For 1, how about B? *chortle chortle*

I thought of that too but decided it was bullshit.

1) BEAD (BEADS, BEADED, BEADING)

In similar vein, also MOULD.

Charlie Reams wrote:2) Are there any which take -ER and -EST but are not adjectives?

QUE (QUEER, QUEEST)

SAY (SAYER, SAYEST)

Alice Moore wrote:1) BEAD (BEADS, BEADED, BEADING)

In similar vein, also MOULD.

BEAD and MOULD are still verbs though.

For number 1: SETT
For number 2: DIV

These words and the OP-specified derivatives (SETTS, SETTED, SETTING; DIVER, DIVEST) are all accepted by Lexplorer.

Alice Moore wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:2) Are there any which take -ER and -EST but are not adjectives?

QUE (QUEER, QUEEST)

SAY (SAYER, SAYEST)

Neither QUEEST nor SAYEST are in the relevant dictionary, which (maybe I should have said) is the ODE 2r.

For 2) - SPOLI?