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EspañolENGLISH WORDS WITH UNCOMMON PROPERTIES
For the purposes of this article, any word which has appeared in a recognised general English dictionary published in the 20th century or later is considered a candidate. For interest, some archaic words, non-standard words and proper names are also included.
The treatment of words of foreign origin can be problematic. The entire history of English involves influence and loanwords from other languages, and this process continues today (see Foreign language influences in English). However, there is a grey area between foreign words and words accepted as English. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' calls such words "resident aliens". Generally, a word of foreign origin is legitimate here if it may be encountered in an English text without translation.
It is important to note the difference between vowel letters and vowel sounds. A string of letters may represent a single vowel sound (like ''ea'' in ''head''); conversely, a single letter may represent multiple vowels, or a diphthong (such as ''boy'', with one diphthong, or ''Peoria'', which has multiple diphthongs). This section deals with words that have many vowel letters, which may, however, represent a smaller number of vowel sounds. Unless otherwise specified, "vowels" here refers to the regular vowels, ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''u''.
''Euouae'' (a type of cadence in mediæval music) contains six vowel letters in a row. It is a pseudo-word, however, formed from the vowels of the last six syllables of the "Gloria Patri" doxology: "seculorum. Amen". It is also often spelt ''evovae''.[1]
There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: ''queueing''. More unusual examples are ''cooeeing'' (making a "cooee" sound), ''miaoued'' or ''miaouing'' (from ''miaou'', to make a sound like a cat; more commonly ''miaow'' or ''meow''). Another candidate is ''zoaeae'', a plural of ''zoaea''. ''Zoaea'', more commonly spelt ''zoea'', is a larval stage in crustacean development. Those who write using the ligature "æ" may consider the singular to have only three vowels (''zoæa''). Proper nouns and their derivatives include ''Rousseauian'' (pertaining to the philosopher Rousseau), ''Aeaea'' or ''Aiaia'' (a location in Greek mythology), and the related adjectives ''Aeaean''/''Aiaian''.
The list of common words with four vowels in a row is also fairly short, and includes ''aqueous'', ''Hawaiian'', ''obsequious'', ''onomatopoeia'', ''pharmacopoeia'', ''queue'', and ''sequoia'', amongst a few others.
Examples of words consisting entirely of vowels, including proper names and some words already mentioned, are:
★ ''a'' (the indefinite article)
★ ''aa'' (a geological term for a type of lava)
★ ''ae'' (a Scots adjective form of "one")
★ ''Aeaea'' or ''Aiaia'' (a location in Greek mythology)
★ '' (magic)
★ ''ai'' (the three-toed sloth)
★ ''aia'' (a Brazilian bird)
★ ''Aiea'' (a town in Hawaii)
★ ''au'' (French for "to" or "with", encountered in English in compounds such as ''au pair'' and ''au fait'')
★ ''euouae'' (a type of cadence in mediaeval music)
★ ''euoi'' (a Greek exclamation of joy)
★ ''eau'' (French for "water", encountered in English in compounds such as ''eau de cologne'')
★ ''Eiao'' (one of the Marquesas Islands)
★ ''I'' (first person pronoun)
★ ''Iao'' (a Polynesian god)
★ ''I'i'' (a figure in Polynesian mythology)
★ ''Io'' (a figure in Greek mythology, also a moon of Jupiter)
★ ''oi'' (an impolite exclamation used to gain someone's attention)
★ ''oo'' (a Hawaiian bird).
Exclamations such as ''oooo'', ''aaaa'' and ''eeee'' are not normally considered legitimate words.
The shortest word containing the five regular vowels is ''eunoia'' at six letters, followed by ''sequoia'' (and a variety of rarer words such as ''Aeonium'', ''eulogia'', ''miaoued'') at seven. The shortest words with all six vowels (including ''y'') are ''oxygeusia'' (an abnormally acute sense of taste) and ''Oxyuridae'' (a family of parasitic nematodes).
There are many words that feature all five regular vowels in alphabetical order, the commonest being '', ''adventitious'', ''. One of the shortest, at eight letters, is ''. Considering ''y'' as a vowel, the suffix '' can be added to a number of these words; thus the shortest word containing six unique vowels in alphabetical order is '' (11 letters).
''Subcontinental'' and ''uncomplimentary'' are common words having the five vowels in reverse order. One of the shortest such words, at eight letters, is ''Muroidea'', a superfamily of rodents.
Some words that have a high proportion of vowels, including some proper names, are as follows.
★ 6 letters, 1 consonant:
★
★ ''Aeolia'' (a region now in Turkey)
★
★ ''Eogaea'' (a supposed ancient continent)
★
★ ''Euboea'' (a Greek island)
★
★ ''ooecia'' (plural of ''ooecium'', part of the reproductive system of some primitive animals)
★
★ ''zoaeae'', ''Aeaean''/''Aiaian'', ''eunoia'', already mentioned
★ 7 letters, 1 consonant:
★
★ ''ouabaio'' (an African tree that yields the poison ouabain)
★ 8 letters, 2 consonants:
★
★ ''aboideau'' or ''aboiteau'' (a sluice gate)
★
★ ''Beaulieu'' (a village in Hampshire, England)
★
★ ''epopoeia'' (variant of ''epopee'', an epic poem)
★
★ ''quiaquia'' (a type of fish)
★ 9 letters, 2 consonants:
★
★ ''Aizoaceae'' (a plant family)
★
★ ''Aloeaceae'' (a plant family)
★
★ ''Outaouais'' (a region of western Quebec)
★ 11 letters, 3 consonants:
★
★ ''Aecidiaceae'' (a plant family)
★
★ ''Ouagadougou'' (capital of Burkina Faso)
★
★ ''Paeoniaceae'' (a plant family)
★ 12 letters, 3 consonants:
★
★ ''Saurauiaceae'' (a plant family)
''Rhythms'' is the longest common word containing neither ''a, e, i, o'' or ''u''. ''Gypsyfy'', ''gypsyry'', ''symphysy'', ''nymphly'' and ''nymphfly'', are longer but rarer. The archaic word ''twyndyllyngs'' has been cited as the longest of all. 'syzygy', which contains three y's, is still in common usage.
The longest word with only one vowel is ''strengths'' (9 letters), packing six consonant sounds into a single syllable. The words ''s'' (13), '' (12) and ''polyrhythms'' (11) are longer, but each clearly uses the letter ''y'' as a vowel. There are also a variety of onomatopoeic words, such as the nine-letter ''tsktsking'' (making a "tsktsk" sound), which appears in Chambers Dictionary (in which case ''tsktsks'', seven letters and no vowels, should also be possible). Eight-letter words with just one vowel are also fairly rare—as well as ''strength'' itself, some examples are ''schmaltz'', ''schnapps'' and ''twelfths''.
Candidates for words with seven consonants in a row are ''Twelfthstreet'' (normally two words but sometimes written as one, as in a song title; ''Eighthstreet'' is feasible by analogy), and ''Hirschsprung'', as in ''Hirschsprung's disease'' (though this is after a Danish surname).
The place-name ''Knightsbridge'' has six consonants in a row (with four consonant sounds), as do the compound words ''catchphrase'', '', ''sightscreen'', ''watchspring'' and ''watchstrap'', and the somewhat more obscure ''borschts'' (plural of ''borscht'', a type of soup from Eastern Europe), the German-derived ''festschrift'' (a collection of writings honouring a noted academic), ''Eschscholzia'' (a plant genus) and ''bergschrund'' (a glacier crevasse).
Apart from words already mentioned (and their plurals), long words with just two, three, and four vowels include ''Christchurch'', ''spendthrifts'', ''stretchmarks'' (2 vowels, 12 letters); ''farthingsworths'', ''shillingsworths'', ''strengthfulness'' (3, 15); and ''handcraftsmanship'', ''splanchnemphraxis'' (4, 17).
The superlatively long word ''honorificabilitudinitatibus'' (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels, as do the slightly more prosaic medical terms ''hepatoperitonitis'' and ''mesobilirubinogen'' (both 17 letters). The longest such words that are reasonably well known may be ''overimaginative'', ''parasitological'' and ''verisimilitudes'' (all 15 letters). As a country, ''United Arab Emirates'' is unsurpassed for length in its vowel/consonant alternation.
The longest alternating words beginning with a vowel are possibly the 16-letter ''adenolipomatosis'' (a glandular condition), ''aluminosilicates'' (a class of chemical compounds containing aluminium and silicon) and ''anatomicomedical'' (relating to anatomy and medicine).
''Theopneustia'' (an obscure word for Christian divine inspiration) alternates pairs of vowels and consonants.
A number of English words have three of the same letter in sequence, but almost all are constructions involving a suffix, and could arguably be hyphenated or, in some cases, written as two words. They include ''brasssmith'', ''goddessship'', ''headmistressship'', ''wallless'' (lacking walls), and ''bulllike'' (like a bull). The OED contains the word ''frillless''. In some fabrication plants, scrap is called ''offfall'', though the hyphen is nearly universal. This suggests that similar material could be described as ''offfalllike''.
Other candidates are the archaic ''agreeeth'' (third person singular present tense of the verb to agree), and ''tweeer'' (comparative adjective of the qualifier ''twee'' meaning infantilely kitsch), though comparison to ''freer'' and ''seer'' argues against the third ''e''. The use of ''tree'' as a transitive verb meaning "to drive up a tree" makes the dog the ''tree-er'' and the cat the ''tree-ee''. There are also many possessives ending in ''-ss's'' (e.g. ''actress's'').
Place-names include ''Rossshire'' and ''Invernessshire'', both in Scotland, UK (though both of these counties are usually hyphenated in official documentation), and ''Kaaawa'' in Hawaii (although this is a common misspelling of ''Kaaawa'' in Hawaiian, the okina being a glottal stop). The famous Welsh placename ''Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch'' contains the letter ''l'' four times in a row, but the ''llll'' is in fact the single Welsh digraph ''ll'' twice, rather than four ''l''s.
Constructions such as ''zzzzzz'' (sound of a person snoring, representing sleep), ''shhhhhh'' (quiet!), and ''aaaaargh'' (cry of distress) are not normally recognised as legitimate words.
''Bookkeeper'' has three consecutive doubled letters (''subbookkeeper'', which has four, seems to have been invented by word puzzlists). Many words have two consecutive doubled letters; examples are ''roommate'', ''balloon'', ''coffee'', ''woolly'', ''steellike'' and ''succeed''. The word ''possessionlessness'' has four doubled letters; examples of common words with three are ''addressee'', ''committee'' and ''keenness''.
The letters ''a'', ''j'', ''q'', ''x'' and ''y'' appear doubled only in words imported from other languages or proper names (e.g. ''aardvark'', ''hajj'', ''Zaqqum'', ''Exxon'', ''Hayyim''). Doubled ''h'', ''i'', ''k'', ''u'', ''v'' and ''w'' are also rare in English, with ''hh'' and ''ww'' occurring only in compounds. Examples include:
★ '''h''': ''bathhouse'', ''beachhead'', ''fishhook'', ''hitchhiker'', ''roughhouse'', ''withhold''
★ '''i''': ''genii'', ''radii'', ''skiing'', ''taxiing''
★ '''k''': ''bookkeeper'', ''bookkeeping'', ''chukka'', ''dekko'', ''tikka'', ''trekked'', ''trekker'', ''trekking''
★ '''u''': ''continuum'', ''duumvir'', ''residuum'', ''vacuum''
★ '''v''': ''bevvy'', ''bivvy'', ''civvies'', ''chivvy'', ''flivver'', ''navvy'', ''revved'', ''revving'', ''skivvy'', ''savvy''
★ '''w''': ''glowworm'', ''meadowwort'', ''strawworm''
There is likely to be only one word in the English language to have four of the same letter in sequence, being ''esssse'', meaning ashes.
The following table lists words that repeat the given letter many times. The number of repetitions is shown in brackets. If the word with the most repetitions is dubious (for example, it is hyphenated, arguably should be hyphenated, is a proper name, or seems artificial) then further candidates with fewer repetitions are offered. Where there are many candidate words with the same number of repetitions only the shortest or commonest (judged subjectively) is listed.
Ignoring the 20-letter play title ''Chrononhotonthologos'', the longest words containing only one of the five regular vowels (overlooking ''y'') may be the 17-letter ''proctocolonoscopy'' and ''synchrocyclotrons''. Long words with only one of the six vowels including ''y'' are the 15-letter ''defencelessness'' and ''respectlessness''.
A candidate for longest word containing only one type of consonant is the 10-letter ''coucicouci'', a word apparently included in at least one version of ''Roget's Thesaurus'' to mean "imperfect", but otherwise almost unknown. 9-letter words are ''allolalia'' (a speech disturbance) and ''Coccaceae'' (an obsolete name for a family of bacteria).
Words containing the same sequence of letters multiple times are often relatively uninteresting, being formed by reduplication (e.g. ''higgledy-piggledy'', ''namby-pamby''), repetition of the same word or essentially the same word (''countercountermeasure'', ''gastrogastrostomy'', ''benzeneazobenzene''), or compounding (''handstands'', ''foreshores'', ''nightlight''). Some other examples, with the repeated sequence in brackets followed by the number of repetitions, include: ''nationalisation'' (''ation'', 2), ''undergrounder'' (''under'', 2), ''patinating'' (''atin'', 2), ''assesses'' (''sses'', 2), ''Mississippi'' (''issi'', 2), ''hotshots'' (''hots'', 2), ''Teteté'' (''te'', 3), ''expressionlessness'' (''ess'', 3), ''phosphophorin'' (''pho'', 3), ''Pitjantjatjara'' (''tja'', 3), ''tintinnabulating'' (''tin'', 3), ''nonconfrontation'' (''on'', 4), ''trans-Panamanian'' (''an'', 4).
Long words with just two, three, four, etc. distinct letters include ''booboo'', ''deeded'', ''muumuu'', ''Teteté'' (2 distinct letters, 6 letters in total); ''assesses'', ''referrer'' (3, 8); ''senselessness'' (4, 13); ''defenselessness'' (6, 15); ''disinterestedness'' (7, 17); and ''institutionalisation'' (8, 20).
Words in which no letter is used more than once are called ''isograms'' (though its use in this sense is jargon restricted to those who enjoy recreational linguistics, and is not commonly found in dictionaries). ''Uncopyrightable'', with fifteen letters, is the longest common isogram in English (some also allow ''uncopyrightables''). ''Misconjugatedly'' and ''dermatoglyphics'' share the distinction but are less well-known; ''subdermatoglyphic'' is two letters longer but even more obscure — it has only one report of alleged live use (an article in ''Annals of Dermatology''), and supposedly means "of or pertaining to the patterns on the lower skin layers."
The words ''blepharoconjunctivitis'' and ''pneumoventriculography'' (as well as several others) contain 16 of the 26 letters of the alphabet, though they are not isograms as some letters are repeated.
Sometimes isograms are defined as words in which each letter appears the same number of times, not necessarily just once. Long examples in which each letter appears twice are ''scintillescent'' (an obscure word for sparkling or twinkling), ''Cicadellidae'' (a family of insects), ''Gradgrindian'' (in the manner of Gradgrind, a character in Dickens' novel Hard Times noted for his soulless devotion to facts and statistics), ''happenchance'' (chance circumstance), and ''trisectrices'' (plural of trisectrix, a type of geometrical curve). Long isograms in which each letter appears three times include ''sestettes'' (plural of ''sestette'', a variant of ''sestet'' or ''sextet''), and the fairly uninteresting ''cha-cha-cha'' (a type of dance music). The words ''senescence'', ''intestines'' and ''arraigning'' have four distinct letters, each of which appears an even number of times. The word ''unprosperousness'' has seven such letters.
'' and its derivatives are the only common English words that end in ''mt''. (Though many Americans prefer using ''dreamed''.) Derivatives include ''undreamt'' (typically used only in the phrase "undreamt of"), ''daydreamt'', and the rarer ''outdreamt'' and ''redreamt''. Other ''-mt'' words include the Scots word ''fremt'' (usually ''fremd'' or ''fremmit''[2]) meaning "foreign" or "estranged" (cf. the German "fremd", same meaning) and, familiar but of foreign origin, ''Klimt'', the Austrian painter.
Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in ''-gry''. ''Angry'' and ''hungry'' are the only ones. There are, however, a number of rare and obsolete words; see Gry for a further discussion.
Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end ''-shion'' (though many words end in this sound). These are ''cushion'' and ''fashion'' (derivatives include ''pincushion'', ''refashion'' and ''misfashion'').
''-mt'' and ''-gry'' are possibly the best-known unusual word endings, but there are many others exhibited by only one or two everyday words. Some examples, excluding derivative words, are ''-ln'' (''kiln'', ''Lincoln''),''-tl'' (''axolotl'', ''Quetzalcoatl'', ''Ueueteotl''), ''-bt'' (''doubt'', ''debt''), ''-igy'' (''effigy'', ''prodigy''), ''-nen'' (''linen''), and ''cay'' (''decay'', ''Biscay'').
There are very few common English words ending in ''-u'', and many are assimilated from other languages. Examples include, but are not limited to: ''adieu'', ''beau'', ''bureau'', ''caribou'', ''emu'', ''flu'', ''gnu'', ''guru'', ''impromptu'', ''menu'', ''milieu'', ''ormolu'', ''plateau'', ''portmanteau'', ''thou'', ''tofu'', ''tutu'', and, of course, ''you''. All of these words, excepting ''emu'', ''flu'', ''gnu'', ''guru'', ''thou'', ''tofu'', and ''you'', are derived from French. In addition, there are the Greek letters ''mu'', ''nu,'' and ''tau'', and the proper nouns ''Urdu'', ''Hindu'' and ''Katmandu''.
There are similarly few words ending in ''-v''. Examples found in English dictionaries, including some words of foreign origin, are ''chav'', ''leitmotiv'', ''lev'', ''shiv'', ''Slav'', ''Yugoslav'', ''spiv'' and ''tav''. Abbreviations and acronyms that have to a greater or lesser extent attained the status of words include ''derv'' (diesel fuel), ''guv'' (British informal term of respectful address, from ''governor''), ''lav'' (''lavatory''), ''luv'' (''love''), ''perv'' (''pervert''), ''rev'' (as of an engine, from ''revolution''), ''sov'' (British, old-fashioned, for ''sovereign'', the coin). There are also numerous place-names and personal names, especially of Russian or Eastern European origin, such as ''Kiev'', ''Chekhov'', ''Molotov'', ''Prokofiev''.
Words beginning with a double letter are generally very rare. The most common combination is probably ''oo-'' (''oodles'', ''oolong'', ''oomph'', ''oops'', ''ooze'', and a number of less familiar examples, mostly technical words incorporating the prefix ''oo-'', meaning "egg"), followed by ''aa-'' (familiar examples being ''aardvark'' and ''Aaron''), and ''ee-'' (''eel'', ''eerie'', ''eek'', ''eesome'' (attractive)).
Otherwise such words are unlikely to be considered part of the English vocabulary, and almost entirely of foreign origin. Some examples are ''Ccoya'' (Inca queen), ''iiwi'' (a Hawaiian bird), ''llama'', ''llano'' (a grassy plain), and ''llanero'' (someone who lives on a ''llano''). There are, however, numerous Welsh placenames beginning ''Ll-'' (e.g. ''Llandudno'', ''Llanberis'')—plus the familiar personal names ''Lloyd'' and ''Llewel(l)yn''—and a smaller number beginning ''Ff-'' (e.g. ''Ffestiniog'', ''Ffrith''). A number of Japanese names begin ''Ii-'' when transliterated into the Roman alphabet.
The words ''euouae'', ''Aeaea'' and ''euoi'', mentioned earlier under "Many vowels", start with six, five and four vowels respectively. There are very few other words starting with four vowels. Some proper name examples are: ''El Aaiún'' (a city in Western Sahara),
''Aeaetes'' (a character in Greek mythology), ''Aiea'' (a town in Hawaii), ''Aouad'' (personal name), ''Aouita'' (personal name), ''Euaechme'' (a character in Greek mythology), ''Ueueteotl'' (an Aztec god) and ''El Ouaer'' (a retired Tunisian football goalkeeper).
The list of words starting with three vowels is rather longer, but most are obscure. Some of the more familiar examples are: ''aeolian'' (relating to the wind), ''aeon'' (an age),
''aoudad'' (a sheep-like animal of northern Africa), ''eau'' (French for "water", encountered in English in compounds such as ''eau de Cologne''), ''Iain'' (personal name), ''oeuvre'' (an artist's body of work), ''Ouagadougou'' (capital of the African country Burkina Faso), and ''ouija'' (a board used by mediums to reveal spirit messages). ''Aeolian'' and ''aeon'' are British English spellings.
There are similarly few English words beginning with a large number of consonants. ''Tsktsks'' appears in Collins Dictionary. The words ''crwth'' and ''cwtch'' (of Welsh origin) might be claimed to consist of five consonants, but the "w" clearly functions as a vowel. There is also a surname ''Schkrohowsky'' of Russian origin, and ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' lists ''Schtscherbatchew'' as an alternative spelling (which is a transliteration into the German language) of the surname of Russian composer Vladimir Shcherbachev, although in the Cyrillic alphabet, 'schch' is but one character Щ.
There are a reasonable number of words beginning with four consonants. The commonest beginnings are ''phth-'' (''phthalein'', ''phthisis'', ''Phthirus'') and ''sch-'' (mostly words of German/Yiddish origin such as ''schlep'', ''schmaltz'', ''schnapps''). Other examples are ''chthonic'', ''pschent'', ''sphragide'' and ''tshwala''.
A selective list of words with other unusual initial letter combinations follows. Unsurprisingly, many are of foreign origin: ''bdellium'', ''bwana'', '', ''ctenoid'' (comb-like), ''czar'', ''dghaisa'' (a Maltese rowing boat), ''dvandva'', ''dziggetai'' (a Mongolian wild ass), ''fjord'', ''Gbari'' (an African language), ''gmelina'', ''jnana'', ''kgotla'' (in southern Africa, a meeting place), ''kshatriya'', '', ''mbaqanga'', ''mho'', ''mnemonic'', ''mridanga'', ''Mwera'' (an African language), ''mzungu'' (in East Africa, a white person), ''Ndebele'', ''ngaio'', ''oquassa'' (a type of North American trout), ''pfennig'', ''pneumonia'', ''ptarmigan'', ''pzazz'' (glamour), ''qawwali'', ''qintar'', ''qoph'', ''sforzando'', ''sfumato'', ''sjambok'', '', ''tmesis'', ''tsunami'', ''tzar'', ''vlei'' (in southern Africa, a seasonally flooded area), ''vroom'' (a revving sound), ''Xhosa'', ''xiphoid'', ''xoanan'' (a carved wooden icon), ''Yggdrasil'', ''ylem'', ''ynambu'' (a South American bird), ''yttrium'', ''zloty'', ''zwitterion''.
Main articles: List of English words containing Q not followed by U
''Boldface'' and ''feedback'' both contain all the letters from ''a'' to ''f'' (there are many such words, but these are the shortest at eight letters). There is probably no common English word that contains all letters ''a'' through ''g''. ''Feedbacking'' or ''deboldfacing'' may be acceptable in some usage. ''Black-figured'' (referring to a type of pottery decoration) and ''double-refracting'' are hyphenated examples.
The longest word consisting entirely of letters from the first half of the alphabet (''a'' through ''m'') may be ''Hamamelidaceae'' (a plant family) at 14 letters. Long common words include ''fickleheaded'' (12 letters), ''fiddledeedee'' (12), ''blackballed'' (11), and ''blackmailed'' (11).
Among the longest words consisting only of the letters ''a'' through ''g'' (the names of the notes of a musical scale) are: ''cabbaged'' (past tense of "to cabbage", meaning to steal), ''debagged'' (past tense of "to debag", meaning to remove the trousers of), ''Fabaceae'' and ''Fagaceae'' (all 8 letters).
''Soupspoons'' (10) consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet, as does the hyphenated ''topsy-turvy'' and a number of rarer 10-letter words such as ''nonsupport'' (failure to support), ''puttyroots'' (plural of ''puttyroot'', a species of orchid), and ''zoosporous'' (relating to a ''zoospore'', a type of fungal or algal spore).
The longest words spelt solely with the left hand when typing properly using a QWERTY keyboard may be the 14-letter ''aftercataracts'' (secondary cataracts of the eye) and ''sweaterdresses'' (plural of ''sweaterdress'', a knitted dress). The longest common words are the 12-letter ''desegregated'', ''desegregates'', ''reverberated'', ''reverberates'' and ''stewardesses''.
The 13-letter chemical name ''phyllophyllin'' can be typed solely with the right hand. The longest such word that is reasonably common is the 9-letter ''polyphony''. The phrase ''Hoi polloi'' is another 9-letter example.
Common words of ten letters that can be spelled solely with the top line of letters on a QWERTY keyboard include ''perpetuity'', ''proprietor'', ''repertoire'' and, fittingly, ''typewriter'' (though this may have been a deliberate goal driving the design of the QWERTY layout). There are at least two eleven-letter words, both rare: ''proterotype'' and ''rupturewort''.
The eight-letter words ''ashfalls'', ''Falashas'', ''Hadassah'', ''Haggadah'' and ''Haskalah'' can all be typed on the middle row of letters on the keyboard. The longest such common word is probably the seven-letter ''alfalfa''.
No English word takes its letters exclusively from the bottom row of letters on a keyboard; neither vowels nor pseudo-vowels reside on this row.
The longest words whose letters are in alphabetical order include the eight-letter ''Aegilops'' (a grass genus), and the seven-letter ''addeems'' (from the archaic verb ''addeem'', meaning to award), ''alloquy'' (an archaic or literary word for an address), ''beefily'' (in a beefy manner), ''billowy'' (like a wave or surge), ''dikkops'' (a South African bird) and ''gimmors'' (plural of ''gimmor'', an old-fashioned word for a mechanical contrivance). Common six-letter words sharing this property include "accept" ''almost'', ''begins'', ''effort'' and various others.
In reverse alphabetical order are the nine-letter ''spoonfeed'' and the eight-letter ''spoonfed'' and ''trollied''.
There are a number of words that contain a string of four consecutive letters of the alphabet. The commonest combination is ''rstu'', with most examples having the prefix ''under-'', ''over-'' or ''super-'' (e.g. ''understudy'', ''overstuff'', ''superstud''). Words with the combination ''mnop'' include ''cremnophobia'' (a fear of steep slopes), ''gymnopaedic'' (of birds, having unfeathered young), ''limnophilous'' (marsh-loving) and ''Prumnopitys'' (a genus of conifers). ''Chelmno'', a town in Poland, has the unusual combination ''lmno''.
The most common words formed only from consecutive letters of the alphabet are ''hi'' and ''no''. Other possibilities are limited to ''ab'' (short for ''abdominal''), ''de'' (arguably foreign), ''def'' (slang word meaning excellent), ''ef'' (the name of the letter ''f'') and ''op'' (short for ''operation'').
Main articles: Palindrome
A palindrome is a word or phrase that is spelled the same whether read forward or backward, disregarding punctuation - such as "Madam, I'm Adam." The longest common single-word palindromes are ''deified'', ''racecar'', ''repaper'', ''reviver'', and ''rotator''. See for a comprehensive list.
Main articles: Kangaroo word
A kangaroo word is a word that contains all letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning.
In a dictionary that lists the reversed spellings of words alphabetically, some of the first entries (excluding proper names) would be:
★ ''a'' (=''a'', the indefinite article)
★ ''aa'' (=''aa'', a type of lava)
★ ''aab'' (=''baa'', the sound made by a sheep)
★ ''aahc'' (=''chaa'', a variant of ''char'', British slang for tea)
★ ''aakkram'' (=''markkaa'', partitive singular (used after numbers) of ''markka'', a former Finnish unit of currency)
★ ...
Some proper names would appear earlier: ''aabbirem'' (=''Meribbaa'', a Biblical name); ''aabmup'' (=''Pumbaa''); ''aabre'' (=''Erbaa'', a town in Turkey); ''aacisuan'' (=''Nausicaa''); ''aaemu'' (=''Umeaa''); ''aagsin'' (=''Nisga'a'').
The first entries that correspond to common words (including some proper names) would be, in normal letter order, ''casaba'', ''Abba'', ''Sheba'', ''amoeba'', ''Toshiba'', ''Elba'', ''melba'', ''mamba'', ''samba''.
The last few entries all come from words ending ''-uzz'', including:
★ ''zzuh'' (=''huzz'', to buzz or murmur)
★ ''zzuks'' (=''skuzz'', variant of ''scuzz'')
★ ''zzul'' (=''luzz'', British slang, meaning to chuck)
★ ''zzum'' (=''muzz'', British slang, meaning to confuse)
★ ''zzurf'' (=''fruzz'', to brush hair the wrong way)
Suppose that, in a dictionary of anagrams, the letters of each word are sorted into alphabetical order (for example, "alphabet" becomes "aabehlpt"), and then the resulting strings are themselves sorted alphabetically. After the usual culprits ''a'' and ''aa'', some of the first few words in the dictionary (including only the singular form of nouns) would be:
★ ''aaaaaacceglllnorst'' (=''astragalocalcaneal'')
★ ''aaaaaaccegllnorrst'' (=''calcaneoastragalar'')
★ ''aaaaaalmrsstt'' (=''taramasalata'', a fish roe paste)
★ ''aaaaaannrstyy'' (=''Satyanarayana'', another name for Vishnu)
★ ''aaaaabbcdrr'' (=''abracadabra'', a word said when performing a magic trick)
The end of the list might appear something like:
★ ''uw'' (=''Wu'', a Chinese dialect (and region))
★ ''ux'' (=''xu'', a Vietnamese unit of currency)
★ ''uy'' (=''yu'', Chinese jade)
★ ''uz'' (=''Zu'', a Sumerian god)
★ ''uzz'' (=''zuz'', an ancient Hebrew coin)
★ ''xyyzz'' (=''xyzzy'', a magic word from the Colossal Cave Adventure)
★ ''xyyzzz'' (=''zyzzyx'', a type of wasp)
Most people are aware that the letter ''y'' can serve as both a consonant and a vowel. ''w'' can also be an orthographic vowel, since ''how'' is pronounced /hau/ (with ''w'' representing the second half of the diphthong.)
However, ''cwm'' (pronounced "koom", defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which ''w'' represents a nucleus vowel, as is ''crwth'' (pronounced "krooth", a type of stringed instrument). Both words are in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. They derive from the Welsh use of ''w'' to represent a vowel. The word ''cwm'' is commonly applied to Welsh place names; cwms of glacial origin are a common feature of Welsh geography. It is also used to describe features in the Himalaya.
Both these examples may belong in 'Words of Foreign Origin', as they are actual words in the Welsh language which have been absorbed into English. See ''coombe'' as the south-west English equivalent of ''cwm''.
''Ewe'' and ''you'' are a pair of words with identical pronunciations that have no letters in common. Another example is the pair ''eye'' and ''I''. However, such word pairs are often dependent on the accent of the speaker. For instance, Canadians might recognize ''a'' and ''eh'' as such a pair, whereas other American English speakers might not.
'See also'
★ Homophone
★ List of commonly confused homonyms
Wikitionary appendices
★
★
Homographs are words with identical spellings but different meanings. A famous example is the town of ''Reading'' (pronounced to rhyme with ''threading'') vs. the gerund ''reading'', as in reading a book (pronounced to rhyme with ''feeding''). At one time the bookseller Blackwell's had a branch in Reading, signed "Blackwells Reading Book Shop", in which either pronunciation made sense.
See also List of English homographs.
Main articles: Auto-antonym
A few English words have such disparate definitions that one meaning is the opposite of another. These are called "self-antonyms", "auto-antonyms" or "contronyms". Examples include ''cleave'' or ''clip'' (joining things together or taking them apart), ''fast'' (move quickly or fix in one spot) and ''enjoin'' (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done). In very rare cases, there are two English words which are pronounced the same, but have opposite meanings (raze and raise)
The nine-word sequence ''I'', ''in'', ''sin'', ''sing'', ''sting'', ''string'', ''staring'', ''starting'' (or ''starling''), ''startling'' can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word.
There are a number of other nine-word sequences that use only common words, and numerous shorter sequences, such as the seven-word ''a'', ''at'', ''rat'', ''rate'', ''irate'', ''pirate'', ''pirates''.
If rare words, proper names and/or obsolete words are allowed then sequences of at least eleven words are possible. One example is: ''a'', ''ma'' (mother), ''mac'' (raincoat, British), ''mace'' (spice), ''macle'' (mineral), ''macule'' (skin spot), ''maculae'' (plural of ''macula'', variant of ''macule''), ''maculate'' (blotchy), ''masculate'' (to make strong, obsolete), ''emasculate'', ''emasculated''.
''Al'', ''Ala'', ''Alan'', ''Alana'', ''Alayna'' is a sequence consisting only of first names.
A seven-word sequence in which letters are added to the ''end'' of the previous word is: ''ma'', ''max'' (used in phrases such as ''to the max''), ''maxi'' (a long skirt), ''maxim'', ''maxima'' (plural of ''maximum''), ''maximal'', ''maximals'' (plural of ''maximal'', used as noun in mathematics). An eight-word sequence including proper nouns is: ''ta'' (thanks, British), ''tam'' (Scottish cap), ''Tama'' (asteroid), ''Tamar'' (English river), ''tamari'' (soy sauce), ''tamarin'' (monkey), ''tamarind'' (tree), ''tamarinds'' (plural).
The one-syllable word ''are'', with the addition of one letter, becomes ''area'', a word with three syllables.
A six-word sequence in which letters are added to the ''beginning'' of the words is: ''hes'' (plural of ''he'', used as a noun to mean a male), ''shes'' (plural of ''she''), ''ashes'', ''lashes'', ''plashes'' (plural of ''plash'', a splashing sound), ''splashes''.
:''See Ough (combination).''
Main articles: Longest word in English
''Antidisestablishmentarianism'' listed in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term ''pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'' is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question 'What is the longest English word?'.
The ''Guinness Book of Records'', in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be 'floccinaucinihilipilification' at 29 letters. Defined as ''the act of estimating (something) as worthless'', its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.
Paradoxically, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, meaning fear of long words, is 36 letters long. However, Sesquipedalophobia is more commonly used to refer to this disorder.
Chemical nomenclature of organic compounds and especially proteins can easily beat any record, as official nomenclature rules lead to legitimate names thousands of letters long.
Main articles: List of the longest English words with one syllable
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is either ''squirrelled'', ''scraunched'', or one of several 9-letter words (such as ''squelched''). The first two words may be pronounced using more than one syllable in some accents. ''Strengths'' is the longest with only one vowel.
In the most common form of rhyme, words rhyme if they end in identically or nearly-identically sounding syllables, and match in stress. If a word has an unusual or unique ending syllable and no other word has a stress pattern to match, it does not rhyme. While many polysyllabic words have no rhyme, such as "purple," only a handful of single-syllable words fit this description. Excluding disputed loan words, whose foreign sounds make them obviously difficult, such unrhymable English words include ''beige'' (some may rhyme this with "page" but regional pronunciations may change this), ''bulb'', ''depth'', ''kiln'', ''month'', ''pint'', ''wasp'', and ''wolf''. Many of these words' plurals are also unrhymable. Although it has two syllables, ''orange'' is arguably the most famous unrhymable word, though there exists a rare surname "Gorringe"[2].
''Silver'' is commonly considered unrhymable, however it rhymes with chilver, a provincial English term meaning a ewe-lamb or ewe mutton.
Note that some words rhyme if prefixed derivatives are allowed (like ''empurple'' or ''desilver''), but this is not commonly considered proper rhyme.
The most common way to concoct a "rhyme" for such words—usually in humorous poetry—is to rhyme it with the first syllable of a word that is split over two lines, thus forming an enjambment. An example is rhyming ''orange'' with ''car eng/ine'', noted by Douglas Hofstadter. Likewise, Stephen Sondheim rhymed ''silver'' with "will, ver-/bosity, and time", and Willard R. Espy managed the couplet "I might distil Ver-/ona's silver". On a similar note, ''orange'' has been rhymed with "sporange", a place where spores are grown.
A song famous for this style of rhyme was Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song.
Scanning the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' reveals an astounding 76 definitions of the word ''run''. The top five words with large numbers of meanings are:
# ''run'' (76)
# ''set'' (63)
# ''point'' (49)
# ''strike'' (48)
# ''light'' (47)
1. Berry, Mary: "Evovae", ''Grove Music Online'' ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 6 2006), [1]
2. From the television programme QI
★ English language
★ Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics
★ Inherently funny word
★ Irregular plurals of English nouns
★ Lists of English words of international origin
★ List of names in English with non-intuitive pronunciations
★ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
★ Cellar door
★ Ghoti
★ Siamese twins (English language)
★ Constrained writing: literature with uncommon properties
★ Lipogram, a type of constrained writing in which prescribed letters are not allowed to be used
★ Word Oddities
★ Word Trivia
★ Strange and Unusual Dictionaries
★ What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean?
★ Fun with words
The treatment of words of foreign origin can be problematic. The entire history of English involves influence and loanwords from other languages, and this process continues today (see Foreign language influences in English). However, there is a grey area between foreign words and words accepted as English. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' calls such words "resident aliens". Generally, a word of foreign origin is legitimate here if it may be encountered in an English text without translation.
Combinations of letters
Many vowels
It is important to note the difference between vowel letters and vowel sounds. A string of letters may represent a single vowel sound (like ''ea'' in ''head''); conversely, a single letter may represent multiple vowels, or a diphthong (such as ''boy'', with one diphthong, or ''Peoria'', which has multiple diphthongs). This section deals with words that have many vowel letters, which may, however, represent a smaller number of vowel sounds. Unless otherwise specified, "vowels" here refers to the regular vowels, ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''u''.
''Euouae'' (a type of cadence in mediæval music) contains six vowel letters in a row. It is a pseudo-word, however, formed from the vowels of the last six syllables of the "Gloria Patri" doxology: "seculorum. Amen". It is also often spelt ''evovae''.[1]
There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: ''queueing''. More unusual examples are ''cooeeing'' (making a "cooee" sound), ''miaoued'' or ''miaouing'' (from ''miaou'', to make a sound like a cat; more commonly ''miaow'' or ''meow''). Another candidate is ''zoaeae'', a plural of ''zoaea''. ''Zoaea'', more commonly spelt ''zoea'', is a larval stage in crustacean development. Those who write using the ligature "æ" may consider the singular to have only three vowels (''zoæa''). Proper nouns and their derivatives include ''Rousseauian'' (pertaining to the philosopher Rousseau), ''Aeaea'' or ''Aiaia'' (a location in Greek mythology), and the related adjectives ''Aeaean''/''Aiaian''.
The list of common words with four vowels in a row is also fairly short, and includes ''aqueous'', ''Hawaiian'', ''obsequious'', ''onomatopoeia'', ''pharmacopoeia'', ''queue'', and ''sequoia'', amongst a few others.
Examples of words consisting entirely of vowels, including proper names and some words already mentioned, are:
★ ''a'' (the indefinite article)
★ ''aa'' (a geological term for a type of lava)
★ ''ae'' (a Scots adjective form of "one")
★ ''Aeaea'' or ''Aiaia'' (a location in Greek mythology)
★ '' (magic)
★ ''ai'' (the three-toed sloth)
★ ''aia'' (a Brazilian bird)
★ ''Aiea'' (a town in Hawaii)
★ ''au'' (French for "to" or "with", encountered in English in compounds such as ''au pair'' and ''au fait'')
★ ''euouae'' (a type of cadence in mediaeval music)
★ ''euoi'' (a Greek exclamation of joy)
★ ''eau'' (French for "water", encountered in English in compounds such as ''eau de cologne'')
★ ''Eiao'' (one of the Marquesas Islands)
★ ''I'' (first person pronoun)
★ ''Iao'' (a Polynesian god)
★ ''I'i'' (a figure in Polynesian mythology)
★ ''Io'' (a figure in Greek mythology, also a moon of Jupiter)
★ ''oi'' (an impolite exclamation used to gain someone's attention)
★ ''oo'' (a Hawaiian bird).
Exclamations such as ''oooo'', ''aaaa'' and ''eeee'' are not normally considered legitimate words.
The shortest word containing the five regular vowels is ''eunoia'' at six letters, followed by ''sequoia'' (and a variety of rarer words such as ''Aeonium'', ''eulogia'', ''miaoued'') at seven. The shortest words with all six vowels (including ''y'') are ''oxygeusia'' (an abnormally acute sense of taste) and ''Oxyuridae'' (a family of parasitic nematodes).
There are many words that feature all five regular vowels in alphabetical order, the commonest being '', ''adventitious'', ''. One of the shortest, at eight letters, is ''. Considering ''y'' as a vowel, the suffix '' can be added to a number of these words; thus the shortest word containing six unique vowels in alphabetical order is '' (11 letters).
''Subcontinental'' and ''uncomplimentary'' are common words having the five vowels in reverse order. One of the shortest such words, at eight letters, is ''Muroidea'', a superfamily of rodents.
Some words that have a high proportion of vowels, including some proper names, are as follows.
★ 6 letters, 1 consonant:
★
★ ''Aeolia'' (a region now in Turkey)
★
★ ''Eogaea'' (a supposed ancient continent)
★
★ ''Euboea'' (a Greek island)
★
★ ''ooecia'' (plural of ''ooecium'', part of the reproductive system of some primitive animals)
★
★ ''zoaeae'', ''Aeaean''/''Aiaian'', ''eunoia'', already mentioned
★ 7 letters, 1 consonant:
★
★ ''ouabaio'' (an African tree that yields the poison ouabain)
★ 8 letters, 2 consonants:
★
★ ''aboideau'' or ''aboiteau'' (a sluice gate)
★
★ ''Beaulieu'' (a village in Hampshire, England)
★
★ ''epopoeia'' (variant of ''epopee'', an epic poem)
★
★ ''quiaquia'' (a type of fish)
★ 9 letters, 2 consonants:
★
★ ''Aizoaceae'' (a plant family)
★
★ ''Aloeaceae'' (a plant family)
★
★ ''Outaouais'' (a region of western Quebec)
★ 11 letters, 3 consonants:
★
★ ''Aecidiaceae'' (a plant family)
★
★ ''Ouagadougou'' (capital of Burkina Faso)
★
★ ''Paeoniaceae'' (a plant family)
★ 12 letters, 3 consonants:
★
★ ''Saurauiaceae'' (a plant family)
No vowels but "y"
''Rhythms'' is the longest common word containing neither ''a, e, i, o'' or ''u''. ''Gypsyfy'', ''gypsyry'', ''symphysy'', ''nymphly'' and ''nymphfly'', are longer but rarer. The archaic word ''twyndyllyngs'' has been cited as the longest of all. 'syzygy', which contains three y's, is still in common usage.
Many consonants
The longest word with only one vowel is ''strengths'' (9 letters), packing six consonant sounds into a single syllable. The words ''s'' (13), '' (12) and ''polyrhythms'' (11) are longer, but each clearly uses the letter ''y'' as a vowel. There are also a variety of onomatopoeic words, such as the nine-letter ''tsktsking'' (making a "tsktsk" sound), which appears in Chambers Dictionary (in which case ''tsktsks'', seven letters and no vowels, should also be possible). Eight-letter words with just one vowel are also fairly rare—as well as ''strength'' itself, some examples are ''schmaltz'', ''schnapps'' and ''twelfths''.
Candidates for words with seven consonants in a row are ''Twelfthstreet'' (normally two words but sometimes written as one, as in a song title; ''Eighthstreet'' is feasible by analogy), and ''Hirschsprung'', as in ''Hirschsprung's disease'' (though this is after a Danish surname).
The place-name ''Knightsbridge'' has six consonants in a row (with four consonant sounds), as do the compound words ''catchphrase'', '', ''sightscreen'', ''watchspring'' and ''watchstrap'', and the somewhat more obscure ''borschts'' (plural of ''borscht'', a type of soup from Eastern Europe), the German-derived ''festschrift'' (a collection of writings honouring a noted academic), ''Eschscholzia'' (a plant genus) and ''bergschrund'' (a glacier crevasse).
Apart from words already mentioned (and their plurals), long words with just two, three, and four vowels include ''Christchurch'', ''spendthrifts'', ''stretchmarks'' (2 vowels, 12 letters); ''farthingsworths'', ''shillingsworths'', ''strengthfulness'' (3, 15); and ''handcraftsmanship'', ''splanchnemphraxis'' (4, 17).
Alternating vowels and consonants
The superlatively long word ''honorificabilitudinitatibus'' (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels, as do the slightly more prosaic medical terms ''hepatoperitonitis'' and ''mesobilirubinogen'' (both 17 letters). The longest such words that are reasonably well known may be ''overimaginative'', ''parasitological'' and ''verisimilitudes'' (all 15 letters). As a country, ''United Arab Emirates'' is unsurpassed for length in its vowel/consonant alternation.
The longest alternating words beginning with a vowel are possibly the 16-letter ''adenolipomatosis'' (a glandular condition), ''aluminosilicates'' (a class of chemical compounds containing aluminium and silicon) and ''anatomicomedical'' (relating to anatomy and medicine).
''Theopneustia'' (an obscure word for Christian divine inspiration) alternates pairs of vowels and consonants.
Doubled and tripled letters
A number of English words have three of the same letter in sequence, but almost all are constructions involving a suffix, and could arguably be hyphenated or, in some cases, written as two words. They include ''brasssmith'', ''goddessship'', ''headmistressship'', ''wallless'' (lacking walls), and ''bulllike'' (like a bull). The OED contains the word ''frillless''. In some fabrication plants, scrap is called ''offfall'', though the hyphen is nearly universal. This suggests that similar material could be described as ''offfalllike''.
Other candidates are the archaic ''agreeeth'' (third person singular present tense of the verb to agree), and ''tweeer'' (comparative adjective of the qualifier ''twee'' meaning infantilely kitsch), though comparison to ''freer'' and ''seer'' argues against the third ''e''. The use of ''tree'' as a transitive verb meaning "to drive up a tree" makes the dog the ''tree-er'' and the cat the ''tree-ee''. There are also many possessives ending in ''-ss's'' (e.g. ''actress's'').
Place-names include ''Rossshire'' and ''Invernessshire'', both in Scotland, UK (though both of these counties are usually hyphenated in official documentation), and ''Kaaawa'' in Hawaii (although this is a common misspelling of ''Kaaawa'' in Hawaiian, the okina being a glottal stop). The famous Welsh placename ''Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch'' contains the letter ''l'' four times in a row, but the ''llll'' is in fact the single Welsh digraph ''ll'' twice, rather than four ''l''s.
Constructions such as ''zzzzzz'' (sound of a person snoring, representing sleep), ''shhhhhh'' (quiet!), and ''aaaaargh'' (cry of distress) are not normally recognised as legitimate words.
''Bookkeeper'' has three consecutive doubled letters (''subbookkeeper'', which has four, seems to have been invented by word puzzlists). Many words have two consecutive doubled letters; examples are ''roommate'', ''balloon'', ''coffee'', ''woolly'', ''steellike'' and ''succeed''. The word ''possessionlessness'' has four doubled letters; examples of common words with three are ''addressee'', ''committee'' and ''keenness''.
The letters ''a'', ''j'', ''q'', ''x'' and ''y'' appear doubled only in words imported from other languages or proper names (e.g. ''aardvark'', ''hajj'', ''Zaqqum'', ''Exxon'', ''Hayyim''). Doubled ''h'', ''i'', ''k'', ''u'', ''v'' and ''w'' are also rare in English, with ''hh'' and ''ww'' occurring only in compounds. Examples include:
★ '''h''': ''bathhouse'', ''beachhead'', ''fishhook'', ''hitchhiker'', ''roughhouse'', ''withhold''
★ '''i''': ''genii'', ''radii'', ''skiing'', ''taxiing''
★ '''k''': ''bookkeeper'', ''bookkeeping'', ''chukka'', ''dekko'', ''tikka'', ''trekked'', ''trekker'', ''trekking''
★ '''u''': ''continuum'', ''duumvir'', ''residuum'', ''vacuum''
★ '''v''': ''bevvy'', ''bivvy'', ''civvies'', ''chivvy'', ''flivver'', ''navvy'', ''revved'', ''revving'', ''skivvy'', ''savvy''
★ '''w''': ''glowworm'', ''meadowwort'', ''strawworm''
There is likely to be only one word in the English language to have four of the same letter in sequence, being ''esssse'', meaning ashes.
Many repeated letters
The following table lists words that repeat the given letter many times. The number of repetitions is shown in brackets. If the word with the most repetitions is dubious (for example, it is hyphenated, arguably should be hyphenated, is a proper name, or seems artificial) then further candidates with fewer repetitions are offered. Where there are many candidate words with the same number of repetitions only the shortest or commonest (judged subjectively) is listed.
| '''a''' | ''taramasalata'' (6) – a fish roe paste ''Galatasaray'' (5) Turkish football (soccer) team |
|---|---|
| '''b''' | ''bibble-babble'' (6) – babble ''flibbertigibbet'' (4) – a silly woman |
| '''c''' | ''pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'' (6) – a famously long word for a respiratory disease ''micrococcic'' (5) – relating to ''micrococcus'', a type of bacterium ''sacrococcygeal'' (4) – pertaining to both the sacrum and the coccyx |
| '''d''' | ''dodecahemidodecahedron'' (5) – a type of polyhedron (solid geometrical figure) |
| '''e''' | ''ethylenediaminetetraacetate'' (7) – a chemical compound, used as a drug ''degenerescence'' (6) – decay ''beekeeper'' (5) |
| '''f''' | ''riffraff'' (4) – undesirable people |
| '''g''' | ''Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch'' (7) – a famously long Welsh placename ''hugger-muggering'' (5) – acting secretly ''giggling'' (4) – laughing in a silly manner |
| '''h''' | ''High-Churchmanship'' (5) – the state of being a High-Churchman, that is, supporting the High Church (a faction of the Anglican church) ''Rhamphorhynchus'' (4) – a genus of pterosaur or orchid |
| '''i''' | ''floccinaucinihilipilification'' (9) – a famously long word meaning "the action of estimating as worthless" ''indivisibilities'' (7) – a supposed plural of ''indivisibility'' ''indivisibility'' (6) – the state of being indivisible |
| '''j''' | ''jejunojejunostomy'' (4) – a surgical procedure carried out on the intestine |
| '''k''' | ''knickknack'' (4) – a small article of little value |
| '''l''' | ''Llullaillaco'' (6) – a mountain in the Andes ''skillfully'' (4) – with skill |
| '''m''' | ''mammogram'' (4) – a breast X-ray |
| '''n''' | ''nonannouncement'' (6) – absence of an announcement ''inconveniencing'' (5) – causing difficulty for |
| '''o''' | ''pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'' (9) – a famously long word for a respiratory disease ''Chrononhotonthologos'' (7) – the name of a play by English writer Henry Carey ''odontonosology'' (6) – dentistry |
| '''p''' | ''whippersnapper'' (4) – a young, impertinent person |
| '''q''' | ''Albuquerque'' (2) – a city in New Mexico ''quinquennium'' (2) – a period of five years ''riqq'' (2) – a type of Egyptian tambourine |
| '''r''' | ''strawberry-raspberry'' (6) – a Japanese plant ''refrigerator'' (4) – an appliance for keeping food cool |
| '''s''' | ''possessionlessness'' (8) – the state of being without possessions ''senselessness'' (6) – lack of sense |
| '''t''' | ''tittle-tattle'' (6) – gossip ''anticonstitutionalist'' (5) – someone who opposes a constitution |
| '''u''' | '''' (9) – a Hawaiian fish ''unscrupulous'' (4) – lacking morals |
| '''v''' | ''ovoviviparous'' (3) – producing eggs that hatch within the body |
| '''w''' | ''wow-wow'' (4) – a type of gibbon ''powwow'' (3) – a Native American gathering ''swallowwort'' (3) – any of several plants |
| '''x''' | ''hexahydroxycyclohexane'' (3) – a chemical compound, part of the vitamin B complex ''executrix'' (2) – a female executor |
| '''y''' | ''polysyndactyly'' (4) – webbing of the hands or feet ''syzygy'' (3) – a kind of astronomical coordination or alignment'' |
| '''z''' | ''zenzizenzizenzic'' (6) – the eighth power or exponent of a number ''razzmatazz'' (4) – showy spectacle |
Ignoring the 20-letter play title ''Chrononhotonthologos'', the longest words containing only one of the five regular vowels (overlooking ''y'') may be the 17-letter ''proctocolonoscopy'' and ''synchrocyclotrons''. Long words with only one of the six vowels including ''y'' are the 15-letter ''defencelessness'' and ''respectlessness''.
A candidate for longest word containing only one type of consonant is the 10-letter ''coucicouci'', a word apparently included in at least one version of ''Roget's Thesaurus'' to mean "imperfect", but otherwise almost unknown. 9-letter words are ''allolalia'' (a speech disturbance) and ''Coccaceae'' (an obsolete name for a family of bacteria).
Words containing the same sequence of letters multiple times are often relatively uninteresting, being formed by reduplication (e.g. ''higgledy-piggledy'', ''namby-pamby''), repetition of the same word or essentially the same word (''countercountermeasure'', ''gastrogastrostomy'', ''benzeneazobenzene''), or compounding (''handstands'', ''foreshores'', ''nightlight''). Some other examples, with the repeated sequence in brackets followed by the number of repetitions, include: ''nationalisation'' (''ation'', 2), ''undergrounder'' (''under'', 2), ''patinating'' (''atin'', 2), ''assesses'' (''sses'', 2), ''Mississippi'' (''issi'', 2), ''hotshots'' (''hots'', 2), ''Teteté'' (''te'', 3), ''expressionlessness'' (''ess'', 3), ''phosphophorin'' (''pho'', 3), ''Pitjantjatjara'' (''tja'', 3), ''tintinnabulating'' (''tin'', 3), ''nonconfrontation'' (''on'', 4), ''trans-Panamanian'' (''an'', 4).
Long words with just two, three, four, etc. distinct letters include ''booboo'', ''deeded'', ''muumuu'', ''Teteté'' (2 distinct letters, 6 letters in total); ''assesses'', ''referrer'' (3, 8); ''senselessness'' (4, 13); ''defenselessness'' (6, 15); ''disinterestedness'' (7, 17); and ''institutionalisation'' (8, 20).
Isograms
Words in which no letter is used more than once are called ''isograms'' (though its use in this sense is jargon restricted to those who enjoy recreational linguistics, and is not commonly found in dictionaries). ''Uncopyrightable'', with fifteen letters, is the longest common isogram in English (some also allow ''uncopyrightables''). ''Misconjugatedly'' and ''dermatoglyphics'' share the distinction but are less well-known; ''subdermatoglyphic'' is two letters longer but even more obscure — it has only one report of alleged live use (an article in ''Annals of Dermatology''), and supposedly means "of or pertaining to the patterns on the lower skin layers."
The words ''blepharoconjunctivitis'' and ''pneumoventriculography'' (as well as several others) contain 16 of the 26 letters of the alphabet, though they are not isograms as some letters are repeated.
Sometimes isograms are defined as words in which each letter appears the same number of times, not necessarily just once. Long examples in which each letter appears twice are ''scintillescent'' (an obscure word for sparkling or twinkling), ''Cicadellidae'' (a family of insects), ''Gradgrindian'' (in the manner of Gradgrind, a character in Dickens' novel Hard Times noted for his soulless devotion to facts and statistics), ''happenchance'' (chance circumstance), and ''trisectrices'' (plural of trisectrix, a type of geometrical curve). Long isograms in which each letter appears three times include ''sestettes'' (plural of ''sestette'', a variant of ''sestet'' or ''sextet''), and the fairly uninteresting ''cha-cha-cha'' (a type of dance music). The words ''senescence'', ''intestines'' and ''arraigning'' have four distinct letters, each of which appears an even number of times. The word ''unprosperousness'' has seven such letters.
Unusual word endings
'' and its derivatives are the only common English words that end in ''mt''. (Though many Americans prefer using ''dreamed''.) Derivatives include ''undreamt'' (typically used only in the phrase "undreamt of"), ''daydreamt'', and the rarer ''outdreamt'' and ''redreamt''. Other ''-mt'' words include the Scots word ''fremt'' (usually ''fremd'' or ''fremmit''[2]) meaning "foreign" or "estranged" (cf. the German "fremd", same meaning) and, familiar but of foreign origin, ''Klimt'', the Austrian painter.
Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in ''-gry''. ''Angry'' and ''hungry'' are the only ones. There are, however, a number of rare and obsolete words; see Gry for a further discussion.
Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end ''-shion'' (though many words end in this sound). These are ''cushion'' and ''fashion'' (derivatives include ''pincushion'', ''refashion'' and ''misfashion'').
''-mt'' and ''-gry'' are possibly the best-known unusual word endings, but there are many others exhibited by only one or two everyday words. Some examples, excluding derivative words, are ''-ln'' (''kiln'', ''Lincoln''),''-tl'' (''axolotl'', ''Quetzalcoatl'', ''Ueueteotl''), ''-bt'' (''doubt'', ''debt''), ''-igy'' (''effigy'', ''prodigy''), ''-nen'' (''linen''), and ''cay'' (''decay'', ''Biscay'').
There are very few common English words ending in ''-u'', and many are assimilated from other languages. Examples include, but are not limited to: ''adieu'', ''beau'', ''bureau'', ''caribou'', ''emu'', ''flu'', ''gnu'', ''guru'', ''impromptu'', ''menu'', ''milieu'', ''ormolu'', ''plateau'', ''portmanteau'', ''thou'', ''tofu'', ''tutu'', and, of course, ''you''. All of these words, excepting ''emu'', ''flu'', ''gnu'', ''guru'', ''thou'', ''tofu'', and ''you'', are derived from French. In addition, there are the Greek letters ''mu'', ''nu,'' and ''tau'', and the proper nouns ''Urdu'', ''Hindu'' and ''Katmandu''.
There are similarly few words ending in ''-v''. Examples found in English dictionaries, including some words of foreign origin, are ''chav'', ''leitmotiv'', ''lev'', ''shiv'', ''Slav'', ''Yugoslav'', ''spiv'' and ''tav''. Abbreviations and acronyms that have to a greater or lesser extent attained the status of words include ''derv'' (diesel fuel), ''guv'' (British informal term of respectful address, from ''governor''), ''lav'' (''lavatory''), ''luv'' (''love''), ''perv'' (''pervert''), ''rev'' (as of an engine, from ''revolution''), ''sov'' (British, old-fashioned, for ''sovereign'', the coin). There are also numerous place-names and personal names, especially of Russian or Eastern European origin, such as ''Kiev'', ''Chekhov'', ''Molotov'', ''Prokofiev''.
Unusual word beginnings
Words beginning with a double letter are generally very rare. The most common combination is probably ''oo-'' (''oodles'', ''oolong'', ''oomph'', ''oops'', ''ooze'', and a number of less familiar examples, mostly technical words incorporating the prefix ''oo-'', meaning "egg"), followed by ''aa-'' (familiar examples being ''aardvark'' and ''Aaron''), and ''ee-'' (''eel'', ''eerie'', ''eek'', ''eesome'' (attractive)).
Otherwise such words are unlikely to be considered part of the English vocabulary, and almost entirely of foreign origin. Some examples are ''Ccoya'' (Inca queen), ''iiwi'' (a Hawaiian bird), ''llama'', ''llano'' (a grassy plain), and ''llanero'' (someone who lives on a ''llano''). There are, however, numerous Welsh placenames beginning ''Ll-'' (e.g. ''Llandudno'', ''Llanberis'')—plus the familiar personal names ''Lloyd'' and ''Llewel(l)yn''—and a smaller number beginning ''Ff-'' (e.g. ''Ffestiniog'', ''Ffrith''). A number of Japanese names begin ''Ii-'' when transliterated into the Roman alphabet.
The words ''euouae'', ''Aeaea'' and ''euoi'', mentioned earlier under "Many vowels", start with six, five and four vowels respectively. There are very few other words starting with four vowels. Some proper name examples are: ''El Aaiún'' (a city in Western Sahara),
''Aeaetes'' (a character in Greek mythology), ''Aiea'' (a town in Hawaii), ''Aouad'' (personal name), ''Aouita'' (personal name), ''Euaechme'' (a character in Greek mythology), ''Ueueteotl'' (an Aztec god) and ''El Ouaer'' (a retired Tunisian football goalkeeper).
The list of words starting with three vowels is rather longer, but most are obscure. Some of the more familiar examples are: ''aeolian'' (relating to the wind), ''aeon'' (an age),
''aoudad'' (a sheep-like animal of northern Africa), ''eau'' (French for "water", encountered in English in compounds such as ''eau de Cologne''), ''Iain'' (personal name), ''oeuvre'' (an artist's body of work), ''Ouagadougou'' (capital of the African country Burkina Faso), and ''ouija'' (a board used by mediums to reveal spirit messages). ''Aeolian'' and ''aeon'' are British English spellings.
There are similarly few English words beginning with a large number of consonants. ''Tsktsks'' appears in Collins Dictionary. The words ''crwth'' and ''cwtch'' (of Welsh origin) might be claimed to consist of five consonants, but the "w" clearly functions as a vowel. There is also a surname ''Schkrohowsky'' of Russian origin, and ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' lists ''Schtscherbatchew'' as an alternative spelling (which is a transliteration into the German language) of the surname of Russian composer Vladimir Shcherbachev, although in the Cyrillic alphabet, 'schch' is but one character Щ.
There are a reasonable number of words beginning with four consonants. The commonest beginnings are ''phth-'' (''phthalein'', ''phthisis'', ''Phthirus'') and ''sch-'' (mostly words of German/Yiddish origin such as ''schlep'', ''schmaltz'', ''schnapps''). Other examples are ''chthonic'', ''pschent'', ''sphragide'' and ''tshwala''.
A selective list of words with other unusual initial letter combinations follows. Unsurprisingly, many are of foreign origin: ''bdellium'', ''bwana'', '', ''ctenoid'' (comb-like), ''czar'', ''dghaisa'' (a Maltese rowing boat), ''dvandva'', ''dziggetai'' (a Mongolian wild ass), ''fjord'', ''Gbari'' (an African language), ''gmelina'', ''jnana'', ''kgotla'' (in southern Africa, a meeting place), ''kshatriya'', '', ''mbaqanga'', ''mho'', ''mnemonic'', ''mridanga'', ''Mwera'' (an African language), ''mzungu'' (in East Africa, a white person), ''Ndebele'', ''ngaio'', ''oquassa'' (a type of North American trout), ''pfennig'', ''pneumonia'', ''ptarmigan'', ''pzazz'' (glamour), ''qawwali'', ''qintar'', ''qoph'', ''sforzando'', ''sfumato'', ''sjambok'', '', ''tmesis'', ''tsunami'', ''tzar'', ''vlei'' (in southern Africa, a seasonally flooded area), ''vroom'' (a revving sound), ''Xhosa'', ''xiphoid'', ''xoanan'' (a carved wooden icon), ''Yggdrasil'', ''ylem'', ''ynambu'' (a South American bird), ''yttrium'', ''zloty'', ''zwitterion''.
Q without U
Main articles: List of English words containing Q not followed by U
Containing the letters a, b,c, d...
''Boldface'' and ''feedback'' both contain all the letters from ''a'' to ''f'' (there are many such words, but these are the shortest at eight letters). There is probably no common English word that contains all letters ''a'' through ''g''. ''Feedbacking'' or ''deboldfacing'' may be acceptable in some usage. ''Black-figured'' (referring to a type of pottery decoration) and ''double-refracting'' are hyphenated examples.
The longest word consisting entirely of letters from the first half of the alphabet (''a'' through ''m'') may be ''Hamamelidaceae'' (a plant family) at 14 letters. Long common words include ''fickleheaded'' (12 letters), ''fiddledeedee'' (12), ''blackballed'' (11), and ''blackmailed'' (11).
Among the longest words consisting only of the letters ''a'' through ''g'' (the names of the notes of a musical scale) are: ''cabbaged'' (past tense of "to cabbage", meaning to steal), ''debagged'' (past tense of "to debag", meaning to remove the trousers of), ''Fabaceae'' and ''Fagaceae'' (all 8 letters).
''Soupspoons'' (10) consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet, as does the hyphenated ''topsy-turvy'' and a number of rarer 10-letter words such as ''nonsupport'' (failure to support), ''puttyroots'' (plural of ''puttyroot'', a species of orchid), and ''zoosporous'' (relating to a ''zoospore'', a type of fungal or algal spore).
Typewriter words
The longest words spelt solely with the left hand when typing properly using a QWERTY keyboard may be the 14-letter ''aftercataracts'' (secondary cataracts of the eye) and ''sweaterdresses'' (plural of ''sweaterdress'', a knitted dress). The longest common words are the 12-letter ''desegregated'', ''desegregates'', ''reverberated'', ''reverberates'' and ''stewardesses''.
The 13-letter chemical name ''phyllophyllin'' can be typed solely with the right hand. The longest such word that is reasonably common is the 9-letter ''polyphony''. The phrase ''Hoi polloi'' is another 9-letter example.
Common words of ten letters that can be spelled solely with the top line of letters on a QWERTY keyboard include ''perpetuity'', ''proprietor'', ''repertoire'' and, fittingly, ''typewriter'' (though this may have been a deliberate goal driving the design of the QWERTY layout). There are at least two eleven-letter words, both rare: ''proterotype'' and ''rupturewort''.
The eight-letter words ''ashfalls'', ''Falashas'', ''Hadassah'', ''Haggadah'' and ''Haskalah'' can all be typed on the middle row of letters on the keyboard. The longest such common word is probably the seven-letter ''alfalfa''.
No English word takes its letters exclusively from the bottom row of letters on a keyboard; neither vowels nor pseudo-vowels reside on this row.
Letters in alphabetic order
The longest words whose letters are in alphabetical order include the eight-letter ''Aegilops'' (a grass genus), and the seven-letter ''addeems'' (from the archaic verb ''addeem'', meaning to award), ''alloquy'' (an archaic or literary word for an address), ''beefily'' (in a beefy manner), ''billowy'' (like a wave or surge), ''dikkops'' (a South African bird) and ''gimmors'' (plural of ''gimmor'', an old-fashioned word for a mechanical contrivance). Common six-letter words sharing this property include "accept" ''almost'', ''begins'', ''effort'' and various others.
In reverse alphabetical order are the nine-letter ''spoonfeed'' and the eight-letter ''spoonfed'' and ''trollied''.
There are a number of words that contain a string of four consecutive letters of the alphabet. The commonest combination is ''rstu'', with most examples having the prefix ''under-'', ''over-'' or ''super-'' (e.g. ''understudy'', ''overstuff'', ''superstud''). Words with the combination ''mnop'' include ''cremnophobia'' (a fear of steep slopes), ''gymnopaedic'' (of birds, having unfeathered young), ''limnophilous'' (marsh-loving) and ''Prumnopitys'' (a genus of conifers). ''Chelmno'', a town in Poland, has the unusual combination ''lmno''.
The most common words formed only from consecutive letters of the alphabet are ''hi'' and ''no''. Other possibilities are limited to ''ab'' (short for ''abdominal''), ''de'' (arguably foreign), ''def'' (slang word meaning excellent), ''ef'' (the name of the letter ''f'') and ''op'' (short for ''operation'').
Palindromes
Main articles: Palindrome
A palindrome is a word or phrase that is spelled the same whether read forward or backward, disregarding punctuation - such as "Madam, I'm Adam." The longest common single-word palindromes are ''deified'', ''racecar'', ''repaper'', ''reviver'', and ''rotator''. See for a comprehensive list.
Kangaroo words
Main articles: Kangaroo word
A kangaroo word is a word that contains all letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning.
First and last words by reversed spelling
In a dictionary that lists the reversed spellings of words alphabetically, some of the first entries (excluding proper names) would be:
★ ''a'' (=''a'', the indefinite article)
★ ''aa'' (=''aa'', a type of lava)
★ ''aab'' (=''baa'', the sound made by a sheep)
★ ''aahc'' (=''chaa'', a variant of ''char'', British slang for tea)
★ ''aakkram'' (=''markkaa'', partitive singular (used after numbers) of ''markka'', a former Finnish unit of currency)
★ ...
Some proper names would appear earlier: ''aabbirem'' (=''Meribbaa'', a Biblical name); ''aabmup'' (=''Pumbaa''); ''aabre'' (=''Erbaa'', a town in Turkey); ''aacisuan'' (=''Nausicaa''); ''aaemu'' (=''Umeaa''); ''aagsin'' (=''Nisga'a'').
The first entries that correspond to common words (including some proper names) would be, in normal letter order, ''casaba'', ''Abba'', ''Sheba'', ''amoeba'', ''Toshiba'', ''Elba'', ''melba'', ''mamba'', ''samba''.
The last few entries all come from words ending ''-uzz'', including:
★ ''zzuh'' (=''huzz'', to buzz or murmur)
★ ''zzuks'' (=''skuzz'', variant of ''scuzz'')
★ ''zzul'' (=''luzz'', British slang, meaning to chuck)
★ ''zzum'' (=''muzz'', British slang, meaning to confuse)
★ ''zzurf'' (=''fruzz'', to brush hair the wrong way)
First and last words in anagram dictionary
Suppose that, in a dictionary of anagrams, the letters of each word are sorted into alphabetical order (for example, "alphabet" becomes "aabehlpt"), and then the resulting strings are themselves sorted alphabetically. After the usual culprits ''a'' and ''aa'', some of the first few words in the dictionary (including only the singular form of nouns) would be:
★ ''aaaaaacceglllnorst'' (=''astragalocalcaneal'')
★ ''aaaaaaccegllnorrst'' (=''calcaneoastragalar'')
★ ''aaaaaalmrsstt'' (=''taramasalata'', a fish roe paste)
★ ''aaaaaannrstyy'' (=''Satyanarayana'', another name for Vishnu)
★ ''aaaaabbcdrr'' (=''abracadabra'', a word said when performing a magic trick)
The end of the list might appear something like:
★ ''uw'' (=''Wu'', a Chinese dialect (and region))
★ ''ux'' (=''xu'', a Vietnamese unit of currency)
★ ''uy'' (=''yu'', Chinese jade)
★ ''uz'' (=''Zu'', a Sumerian god)
★ ''uzz'' (=''zuz'', an ancient Hebrew coin)
★ ''xyyzz'' (=''xyzzy'', a magic word from the Colossal Cave Adventure)
★ ''xyyzzz'' (=''zyzzyx'', a type of wasp)
Other unusual spellings
Most people are aware that the letter ''y'' can serve as both a consonant and a vowel. ''w'' can also be an orthographic vowel, since ''how'' is pronounced /hau/ (with ''w'' representing the second half of the diphthong.)
However, ''cwm'' (pronounced "koom", defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which ''w'' represents a nucleus vowel, as is ''crwth'' (pronounced "krooth", a type of stringed instrument). Both words are in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. They derive from the Welsh use of ''w'' to represent a vowel. The word ''cwm'' is commonly applied to Welsh place names; cwms of glacial origin are a common feature of Welsh geography. It is also used to describe features in the Himalaya.
Both these examples may belong in 'Words of Foreign Origin', as they are actual words in the Welsh language which have been absorbed into English. See ''coombe'' as the south-west English equivalent of ''cwm''.
Pairs and groups of words
Homophones
''Ewe'' and ''you'' are a pair of words with identical pronunciations that have no letters in common. Another example is the pair ''eye'' and ''I''. However, such word pairs are often dependent on the accent of the speaker. For instance, Canadians might recognize ''a'' and ''eh'' as such a pair, whereas other American English speakers might not.
'See also'
★ Homophone
★ List of commonly confused homonyms
Wikitionary appendices
★
★
Homographs
Homographs are words with identical spellings but different meanings. A famous example is the town of ''Reading'' (pronounced to rhyme with ''threading'') vs. the gerund ''reading'', as in reading a book (pronounced to rhyme with ''feeding''). At one time the bookseller Blackwell's had a branch in Reading, signed "Blackwells Reading Book Shop", in which either pronunciation made sense.
See also List of English homographs.
Self-antonyms
Main articles: Auto-antonym
A few English words have such disparate definitions that one meaning is the opposite of another. These are called "self-antonyms", "auto-antonyms" or "contronyms". Examples include ''cleave'' or ''clip'' (joining things together or taking them apart), ''fast'' (move quickly or fix in one spot) and ''enjoin'' (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done). In very rare cases, there are two English words which are pronounced the same, but have opposite meanings (raze and raise)
Sequences of words formed by the addition of letters
The nine-word sequence ''I'', ''in'', ''sin'', ''sing'', ''sting'', ''string'', ''staring'', ''starting'' (or ''starling''), ''startling'' can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word.
There are a number of other nine-word sequences that use only common words, and numerous shorter sequences, such as the seven-word ''a'', ''at'', ''rat'', ''rate'', ''irate'', ''pirate'', ''pirates''.
If rare words, proper names and/or obsolete words are allowed then sequences of at least eleven words are possible. One example is: ''a'', ''ma'' (mother), ''mac'' (raincoat, British), ''mace'' (spice), ''macle'' (mineral), ''macule'' (skin spot), ''maculae'' (plural of ''macula'', variant of ''macule''), ''maculate'' (blotchy), ''masculate'' (to make strong, obsolete), ''emasculate'', ''emasculated''.
''Al'', ''Ala'', ''Alan'', ''Alana'', ''Alayna'' is a sequence consisting only of first names.
A seven-word sequence in which letters are added to the ''end'' of the previous word is: ''ma'', ''max'' (used in phrases such as ''to the max''), ''maxi'' (a long skirt), ''maxim'', ''maxima'' (plural of ''maximum''), ''maximal'', ''maximals'' (plural of ''maximal'', used as noun in mathematics). An eight-word sequence including proper nouns is: ''ta'' (thanks, British), ''tam'' (Scottish cap), ''Tama'' (asteroid), ''Tamar'' (English river), ''tamari'' (soy sauce), ''tamarin'' (monkey), ''tamarind'' (tree), ''tamarinds'' (plural).
The one-syllable word ''are'', with the addition of one letter, becomes ''area'', a word with three syllables.
A six-word sequence in which letters are added to the ''beginning'' of the words is: ''hes'' (plural of ''he'', used as a noun to mean a male), ''shes'' (plural of ''she''), ''ashes'', ''lashes'', ''plashes'' (plural of ''plash'', a splashing sound), ''splashes''.
"ough" words
:''See Ough (combination).''
Long words
Main articles: Longest word in English
''Antidisestablishmentarianism'' listed in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term ''pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'' is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question 'What is the longest English word?'.
The ''Guinness Book of Records'', in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be 'floccinaucinihilipilification' at 29 letters. Defined as ''the act of estimating (something) as worthless'', its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.
Paradoxically, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, meaning fear of long words, is 36 letters long. However, Sesquipedalophobia is more commonly used to refer to this disorder.
Chemical nomenclature of organic compounds and especially proteins can easily beat any record, as official nomenclature rules lead to legitimate names thousands of letters long.
Longest one-syllable word
Main articles: List of the longest English words with one syllable
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is either ''squirrelled'', ''scraunched'', or one of several 9-letter words (such as ''squelched''). The first two words may be pronounced using more than one syllable in some accents. ''Strengths'' is the longest with only one vowel.
Unrhymable words
In the most common form of rhyme, words rhyme if they end in identically or nearly-identically sounding syllables, and match in stress. If a word has an unusual or unique ending syllable and no other word has a stress pattern to match, it does not rhyme. While many polysyllabic words have no rhyme, such as "purple," only a handful of single-syllable words fit this description. Excluding disputed loan words, whose foreign sounds make them obviously difficult, such unrhymable English words include ''beige'' (some may rhyme this with "page" but regional pronunciations may change this), ''bulb'', ''depth'', ''kiln'', ''month'', ''pint'', ''wasp'', and ''wolf''. Many of these words' plurals are also unrhymable. Although it has two syllables, ''orange'' is arguably the most famous unrhymable word, though there exists a rare surname "Gorringe"[2].
''Silver'' is commonly considered unrhymable, however it rhymes with chilver, a provincial English term meaning a ewe-lamb or ewe mutton.
Note that some words rhyme if prefixed derivatives are allowed (like ''empurple'' or ''desilver''), but this is not commonly considered proper rhyme.
The most common way to concoct a "rhyme" for such words—usually in humorous poetry—is to rhyme it with the first syllable of a word that is split over two lines, thus forming an enjambment. An example is rhyming ''orange'' with ''car eng/ine'', noted by Douglas Hofstadter. Likewise, Stephen Sondheim rhymed ''silver'' with "will, ver-/bosity, and time", and Willard R. Espy managed the couplet "I might distil Ver-/ona's silver". On a similar note, ''orange'' has been rhymed with "sporange", a place where spores are grown.
A song famous for this style of rhyme was Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song.
Words with large numbers of meanings
Scanning the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' reveals an astounding 76 definitions of the word ''run''. The top five words with large numbers of meanings are:
# ''run'' (76)
# ''set'' (63)
# ''point'' (49)
# ''strike'' (48)
# ''light'' (47)
References
1. Berry, Mary: "Evovae", ''Grove Music Online'' ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 6 2006), [1]
2. From the television programme QI
See also
★ English language
★ Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics
★ Inherently funny word
★ Irregular plurals of English nouns
★ Lists of English words of international origin
★ List of names in English with non-intuitive pronunciations
★ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
★ Cellar door
★ Ghoti
★ Siamese twins (English language)
★ Constrained writing: literature with uncommon properties
★ Lipogram, a type of constrained writing in which prescribed letters are not allowed to be used
External links
★ Word Oddities
★ Word Trivia
★ Strange and Unusual Dictionaries
★ What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean?
★ Fun with words
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psst.. try this: add to faves
