What is the name of a word such as "Wheat" that when you remove the first letter, it is still a word, down to two letters? Ex: Wheat, Heat, Eat, At... Spit, Pit, It. What is the longest such word, in the English language?
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The process of removing the first letter (e.g. greengages->reengages) is called beheadment. What you're looking for is the longest progressive beheadment to a two-letter word. Chris Cole, in Wordplay (pub. Sterling) cites this example:
prestates restates estates states tates ates tes es
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$\begingroup$ tes? es? en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/two-letter-words Longer than "wheat" i found only "splash", but that dictionary has problem with "sh" $\endgroup$– Jan IvanFeb 9, 2017 at 8:28
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