English words with uncommon properties

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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. Everyone would accept that the formerly foreign ballet (French), ketchup (Malay) and safari (Swahili) are now English words. The status of words such as zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, and schadenfreude is less clear cut. 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.

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[edit] Combinations of letters

[edit] 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; conversely, a single letter may represent multiple vowels, or a diphthong. This section deals with words that have many vowel letters, which may, however, represent a low number of actual vowels. 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 plural 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 fairly short, comprising aqueous, Hawaiian, obsequious, onomatopoeia, pharmacopoeia, queue (and derivatives queued and queues), and sequoia.

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"), ai (the three-toed sloth), aia (a Brazilian bird), Aiea (a town in Hawaii), Aeaea or Aiaia (a location in Greek mythology), 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), 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), and 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 abstemious, adventitious, facetious. One of the shortest, at eight letters, is caesious. Considering y as a vowel, the suffix -ly can be added to a number of these words; thus the shortest word containing six unique vowels in alphabetical order is facetiously (11 letters).

Subcontinental, uncomplimentary and unnoticeable 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 not already mentioned that have a high proportion of vowels, including some proper names, are as follows. 6 letters, 5 vowels: Euboea (a Greek island), Aeolia (a region now in Turkey), ooecia (plural of ooecium, part of the reproductive system of some primitive animals); 8 letters, 6 vowels: aboideau or aboiteau (a sluice gate), epopoeia (variant of epopee, an epic poem), quiaquia (a type of fish); 9 letters, 7 vowels: Aizoaceae (a plant family), Aloeaceae (a plant family); 11 letters, 8 vowels: Aecidiaceae (a plant family), Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso), Paeoniaceae (a plant family), Outaouais (a region of western Quebec); 9 letters, 7 vowels.

[edit] Many consonants

The longest word with only one vowel is strengths (9 letters), packing six consonant sounds into a single syllable. The words psychorhythms (13), polyrhythms (11) and rhythmlessly (12) 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. 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, latchstring, 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). Exclamations such as mmmmm and grrrrrrrr are not normally considered legitimate words.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Many repeated 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, 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 Hawaiʻi (although this is a common misspelling of Kaʻaʻawa in Hawaiian, the ʻokina 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 ls.

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.

Long words with just two, three, four... 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). The words senescence, intestines and arraigning have four distinct letters, each of which appears an even number of times. Scintillescent has seven distinct letters each appearing twice, and sestettes (variant of sestets) has three groups of three.

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
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 pterosaurs
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 humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa (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 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. 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 type of 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), Teteté (te, 3), expressionlessness (ess, 3), phosphophorin (pho, 3), Pitjantjatjara (tja, 3), tintinnabulating (tin, 3), nonconfrontation (on, 4), trans-Panamanian (an, 4).

[edit] Few repeated letters

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 not commonly found in dictionaries). Uncopyrightable, with fifteen letters, is the longest common isogram in English (some also allow uncopyrightables). Dermatoglyphics shares the distinction but is a less well-known word; 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.

[edit] Unusual word endings

Dreamt and its derivatives are the only common English words that end in mt. In American English, which prefers dreamed, there are none (some Americans, specifically teachers, still insist on dreamt). 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" 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.

-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), -bt (doubt, debt), -igy (effigy, prodigy), -nen (linen), and cay (decay, Biscay).

There are very few common English words ending in -u. Examples, including some words assimilated from other languages, are: bureau, caribou, emu, gnu, guru, impromptu, menu, milieu, ormolu, plateau, thru (US colloquial spelling), tutu and, of course, you. Proper nouns include Urdu, Hindu and Katmandu.

[edit] 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), ʻiʻiwi (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 Llewel(l)yn and Lloyd – 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), ʻAiea (a town in Hawaiʻi), Aouad (personal name), Aouita (personal name), Euaechme (a character in Greek mythology), and Ueueteotl (an Aztec god).

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. Also, cwrth and cwtch (of Welsh origin) are five consonants, although the "w" 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.

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 partial list of words with other unusual initial letter combinations follows. Unsurprisingly, many are of foreign origin: bdellium, bwana, cnemis, 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, kvetch, 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, svelte, 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.

[edit] Q without U

See main article: List of English words containing a Q not followed by a U.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 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).

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).

[edit] 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. Also, Hoi polloi, if it is considered as a phrase.

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. 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.

[edit] 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 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.

[edit] Palindromes

See main articles Palindrome and Semordnilap.

[edit] 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)
  • aam (=maa, a dialect word for a seagull)
  • aamaju (=Ujamaa, a political system in East Africa)
  • aaupaukunukunumuhumuh (=humuhumunukunukuapuaa, a type of Hawaiian fish)
  • ...

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)

[edit] 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:

  • utx (=tux, contraction of tuxedo, a dinner jacket)
  • uty (=Tuy, a city in Spain)
  • 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)

[edit] Pairs and groups of words

[edit] 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 well believe that a and eh form such a pair whereas other American English speakers might not.

See also Homophone, List of homophones and List of commonly confused homonyms.

[edit] 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[citation needed].

See also List of English homographs.

[edit] Self-antonymns

Main article: 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), enjoin (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done), and inflammable (able to be burned or fire-proof). In very rare cases, there are two English words which are pronounced the same, but have opposite meanings (raze and raise)

[edit] 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, and Alana 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.

[edit] "ough" words

See English orthography – Irregularities in the English spelling system

[edit] Long words

Main article: 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.

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.

[edit] Longest one-syllable word

Main article: 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. The first two words may be pronounced using more than one syllable in some accents. Strengths is the longest with only one vowel.

[edit] 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, depth, kiln, month, orange, pint, wasp, and wolf. Many of these words' plurals are also unrhymable. Of the listed words, orange is arguably the one most famous for being unrhymable.

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 we allow prefixed derivatives of them (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. 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 "door hinge"[2] as well as "sporange", a place where spores are grown.

A song famous for this style of rhyme was Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song.

[edit] 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:

  1. run (76)
  2. set (63)
  3. point (49)
  4. strike (48)
  5. light (47)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Berry, Mary: "Evovae", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 6, 2006), [1]
  2. ^ A segment from Disney's One Saturday Morning

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Tae ka!

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