<P> How much wood would a woodchuck chuck is an American English - language tongue - twister . The woodchuck from the Algonquian word "wejack" is a kind of marmot regionally called a groundhog . The complete beginning of the tongue - twister usually goes: "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" The tongue - twister relies primarily on alliteration to achieve its effects, with five "w" sounds interspersed among five "ch" sounds . </P> <P> A traditional, if nonsensical, "response" to the question is: "A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood". Other--similarly unhelpful--responses include "So much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood!" and "He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood ." </P> <P> A 1957 Associated Press piece refers to the question as "a riddle which beats the Sphinx, since it's still unanswered". A more concrete answer was published by the Associated Press in 1988, which reported that a New York fish and wildlife technician named Richard Thomas had calculated the volume of dirt in a typical 25--30 - foot (7.6--9.1 m) long woodchuck burrow and had determined that if the woodchuck had moved an equivalent volume of wood, it could move "about 700 pounds (320 kg) on a good day, with the wind at his back". Another study, which considered "chuck" to be the opposite of upchucking, determined that a woodchuck could ingest 361.9237001 cm (22.08593926 cu in) of wood per day . </P>

If a woodchuck could chuck wood how much could a woodchuck chuck