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 English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

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. While many words enter English as slang, not all do. ... The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most successful dictionary of the English language, (not to be confused with the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English, formerly New Oxford Dictionary of English, of...

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. In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

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] Euouae is a mnemonic which was used in medieval music to denote the sequence of tones in the seculorum Amen passage of the hymn Gloria Patri. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A doxology (from the Greek doxa, glory + logos, word or speaking) is a short hymn of praise to God in various Christian worship services, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns. ...

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. Queue at US Air Force station in Iraq, for food at a birthday celebration. Queue areas are areas in which people queue (first-come, first-served), that is they wait in line for something. ... The zoea larva of the blue king crab, Paralithodes platypus The zoea is a free-swimming larval stage of crustaceans. ... In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ... Rousseau is a French surname. ... In Greek mythology, Aeaea (sometimes Aiaia) was the home of the sorcerer Joesph. ...

The list of common words with four vowels in a row is also fairly short, and includes aqueous, Hawaiian, obsequious, onomatopoeia, pharmacopoeia, queue, plateaued, and sequoia, amongst a few others. Drinking water This article focuses on water as we experience it every day. ... Hawaiian could refer to the Hawaiian language the native Hawaiian people within Hawaii. ... For the supervillain, see Onomatopoeia (comics). ... Back cover of the Chinese pharmacopoeia First Edition (published in 1930) Pharmacopoeia (literally, the art of the drug compounder), in its modern technical sense, is a book containing directions for the identification of samples and the preparation of compound medicines, and published by the authority of a government or a... This article is about the species commonly called Coast Redwood. For the species commonly called Giant Sequoia, see Sequoiadendron. ...

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)
• aeaeae (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) – contains a consonant, but not one written with a letter generally recognized as a consonant in English.
• 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. This article is about the Anglic language of Scotland. ... In Greek mythology, Aeaea (sometimes Aiaia) was the home of the sorcerer Joesph. ... An ai (Bradypus torquatus) is a species of three-toed South American sloth. ... Village of Aia, Gipuzkoa Province Aia (pronounced eye-a) is a small village situated on the slopes of Mount Pagoeta in the Basque Province of Gipuzkoa, Spain. ... IAEA The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), established as an autonomous organization on July 29, 1957, seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for military purposes. ... Au pair is an anglicization of the French term au pair, which means on par or equal to and describes a young person living on an equal basis with a host family in a foreign country. ... This page is a candidate to be copied to Wiktionary using the Transwiki process. ... Map of the far northwestern Marquesas Islands (modified from a screenshot of a map from MSMaps) Eïao is the largest of the extreme northwestern Marquesas Islands. ... National motto: Mau‘u‘u ha‘e iti Official languages French, Tahitian Political status Dependent territory, administrative division of French Polynesia Capital Tai o Hae Largest City Tai o Hae Area 1,274 km² ( 492 sq. ... In Polynesian mythology (specifically: Samoa), Ii and her brother, Sava, were the first settlers of Savaii. ... The ‘okina is the Hawaiian apostrophe-like character used to indicate the glottal stop consonant. ... Hermes, Io (as cow) and Argus, black-figure amphora, 540–530 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. ...

Other 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)

Aeolia may mean: Another name for Aeolis in Anatolia. ... For the Greek mythological figures see Euboea Euboea, or Negropont or Negroponte (Modern Greek: Εύβοια Évia, Ancient Greek Eúboia), is the second largest of the Greek Aegean Islands and the second largest Greek island overall in area and population (after Crete). ... Ouabain is the familiar name of g-strophanthin, a poisonous cardiac glycoside. ... Beaulieu is a small village located on the south eastern edge of the New Forest national park in Hampshire, England. ... Genera See text. ... Genera Aloe Asphodeline Asphodelus Bulbine Bulbinella Eremurus Gasteria Haworthia Jodrellia Kniphofia Lomatophyllum Poellnitzia Trachyandra Asphodelaceae Juss. ... Outaouais is a region of the province of Quebec, Canada. ... Goblins rule Ouagadougou is run by goblins who come out at night and the people you see walking around in the town are actually goblins in robotic suits that make them look like people. ... Species See text The Peony, Paeonia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Paeoniaceae. ...

Containing all the vowels

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). Eunoia is a rarely used medical term referring to a state of normal mental health. ... This article is about the species commonly called Coast Redwood. For the species commonly called Giant Sequoia, see Sequoiadendron. ... Species Many; see text Aeonium is a genus of about 35 species of succulent, subtropical plants of the family Crassulaceae. ...

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). A suffix is an affix that follows the morphemes to which it can attach. ...

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. Families see text Muroidea is a large superfamily of rodents. ...

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 psychorhythms (13), rhythmlessly (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. Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. ...

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). Hirschsprungs disease, or congenital aganglionic megacolon, involves an enlargement of the colon, caused by bowel obstruction resulting from an aganglionic section of bowel (the normal enteric nerves are absent) that starts at the anus and progresses upwards. ...

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). Knightsbridge is a street and district spanning the City of Westminster and theRoyal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London notable for its eclectic mix of rich, famous, and international residents including several billionaires Roman Abramovich, oligarchs from Russia, China and India, international businessman Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge, trend setters Charles... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... A catch phrase is a phrase or expression that is popularized, usually through repeated use, by a real person or fictional character. ... Borscht with sour cream. ... In academia, a Festschrift (; plural, Festschriften, ) is a book honouring a respected academic. ... Species See text Eschscholzia is a genus of 12 flowering plants in the Papaveraceae (poppy) family. ... Bergschrund at the Schnapfenspitze, Austria A Bergschrund (also called rimaye) is a crevasse positioned at the rear of a corrie next to the steep back wall. ...

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. Honorificabilitudinitatibus is a word appearing in act five, scene one of William Shakespeares Loves Labours Lost. ...

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 and quadrupled letters

Esssse, a spelling used for the word ash in a 14th-century text, has four of the same letter in sequence and is cited in the second edition of the OED.^[2] 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. OED stands for Oxford English Dictionary Office of Enrollment & Discipline This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most successful dictionary of the English language, (not to be confused with the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English, formerly New Oxford Dictionary of English, of...

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. Ross-shire (Siorrachd Rois in Gaelic), a traditional county of Scotland, borders on Sutherlandshire, Cromartyshire (of which it contains many enclaves), Inverness-shire and on an exclave of Nairnshire. ... Inverness-shire is one of the traditional counties of Scotland. ... Walking the beach at Kaaawa. ... The Hawaiian language is an Austronesian language that takes its name from HawaiÊ»i, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (58 Letters long) is a village on the island of Anglesey in Wales, situated on the Menai Strait close to Menai Bridge and Bangor. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

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. Accountancy (British English) or accounting (American English) is the process of maintaining, auditing, and processing financial information for business purposes. ...

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: For other uses, see Aardvark (disambiguation). ... A supplicating pilgrim at Masjid Al Haram, the mosque which was built around the Kaaba (the cubical building at center). ... Zaqqum is a tree which according to Muslim belief is growing in hell. ... This article is about the fuel brand. ... Chayyim (Hebrew: chayyīm), also transscribed as Hayyim, Chaim, Haim. ...

• 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, divvy, flivver, navvy, revved, revving, skivvy, savvy
• w: glowworm, meadowwort, strawworm

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.

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. Taramasalata is a Greek dish, often served as a meze. ... For other uses of Galatasaray, see Galatasaray (disambiguation) Galatasaray Spor Kulübü (in English: Galatasaray Sports Club) or Galatasaray SK is a Turkish sports club based in Istanbul which is famous for its football section. ... Look up pneumonoultramicroscopic- silicovolcanoconiosis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... For the record label, see Sacrum Torch. ... The coccyx is formed of up to five vertebrae. ... In geometry, the great dodecahemidodecahedron is a nonconvex uniform polyhedron, indexed as U70. ... EDTA is the chemical compound ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. ... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (58 Letters long) is a village on the island of Anglesey in Wales, situated on the Menai Strait close to Menai Bridge and Bangor. ... High Church relates to ecclesiology and liturgy in Christian theology and practice. ... Rhamphorynchus is either: a genus of pterosaur a genus of orchid This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... For other uses, see Genus (disambiguation). ... Suborders Pterodactyloidea Rhamphorhynchoidea * Pterosaurs (, from the Greek πτερόσαυρος, pterosauros, meaning winged lizard, often referred to as pterodactyls, from the Greek πτεροδάκτυλος, pterodaktulos, meaning winged finger ) were flying reptiles of the clade Pterosauria. ... Orchid re-directs here; for alternate uses see Orchid (disambiguation) Genera Over 800 See List of Orchidaceae genera. ... Look up floccinaucinihilipilification in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Llullaillaco is a stratovolcano at the border of Argentina (province of Salta) and Chile. ... Mammography is the process of using low-dose X-rays (usually around 0. ... Look up pneumonoultramicroscopic- silicovolcanoconiosis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Chrononhotonthologos is a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734. ... This article is about the largest city of New Mexico. ... The riq (also spelled riqq or rik) is a type of tambourine used as a traditional instrument in Arabic music. ... Fridge redirects here. ... Binomial name Rhinecanthus rectangulus Bloch & Schneider, 1801 The Reef Triggerfish, also known by its Hawaiian name, humuhumu nukunuku apua‘a, is one of several species of triggerfish. ... This article is about a Native American gathering. ... Swallowwort may refer to: The Greater Celandine, Chelidonium majus. ... Look up Syzygy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Zenzizenzizenzic is the eighth power or exponent of a number. ... Chrononhotonthologos is a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734. ...

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). Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Teteté is an endangered Tucanoan language spoken in Ecuador close to the Ecuador-Colombia border. ... Image:Some aboriginal communities in the northern territory australia. ...

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). Teteté is an endangered Tucanoan language spoken in Ecuador close to the Ecuador-Colombia border. ...

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." An isogram (also known as a nonpattern word) is a logological term for a word or phrase without a repeating letter. ... For the glossary of hacker slang, see Jargon File. ... For other uses, see Skin (disambiguation). ...

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. genera: many hundreds including: Graminella Graphocephala Homalodisca Idiocerus Leafhopper is a common name applied to any species from the family Cicadellidae. ... Hard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. ... Trisectrix A trisectrix is a curve which is a variety of the Limaçon of Pascal, and named from its property of angle trisection. ... [[]]A Sestet is the name given to the second division of a sonnet, which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines. ... A Sextet is a formation containing exactly six members. ...

Unusual word endings

Dreamt 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. This article is about the Anglic language of Scotland. ... Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of Vienna Art Nouveau (Vienna Secession) movement. ...

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. Anger can be conveyed in many different ways. ... Hunger is applied literally to the need or craving for food; it can also be applied metaphorically to cravings of other sorts. ... The -Gry Puzzle is a popular puzzle that asks for the third English word, other than angry and hungry, that ends with the letters gry. ...

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). Cushion: makes a lounge or rug softer A cushion (from Old French coisson, coussin; from Latin culcita, a quilt), is a soft bag of some ornamental material, stuffed with wool, hair, feathers, polyester staple fiber, non-woven material, or even paper torn into fragments. ... For other uses, see Fashion (disambiguation). ...

-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. Look up chav, charva in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A leitmotif (also spelled leitmotiv) is a recurring musical theme, associated within a particular piece of music with a particular person, place or idea. ... ISO 4217 Code BGN User(s) Bulgaria Inflation 7. ... :This article is about the knife-like weapon. ... Distribution of Slavic people by language The Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe, where they constitute roughly a third of the population. ... Yugoslavs (Bosnian: Jugosloveni; Macedonian, Serbian Cyrillic: Југословени; Latinic: Jugosloveni; Croatian: Jugoslaveni, Slovenian: Jugoslovani) is an ethnic designation used by some people in former Yugoslavia, which continues to be used in some of its successor countries. ... Category: ... Taw or Tav is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its original value is an voiceless alveolar plosive, IPA , The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Tau (Τ), Latin T, and the equivalent in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Map of Ukraine with Kiev highlighted Coordinates: , Country Ukraine Oblast Kiev City Municipality Raion Municipality Government  - Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi Elevation 179 m (587 ft) Population (2006)  - City 4,450,968  - Density 3,299/km² (8,544. ... Anton Chekhov, Russian writer Pavel Chekov, character in Star Trek Chekhov, town in Moscow Oblast, Russia Chekhov, town in Sakhalin Oblast, Russia Chekhovo, health resort in Bashkiria, Russia This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Molotov can refer to: Vyacheslav Molotov - a Soviet politician and diplomat under Stalin The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed by Molotov, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact The Molotov Line, a line of fortifications built by the Soviet Union in World War II following the Nazi-Soviet Pact Molotov cocktail... Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Серге́й Серге́евич Проко́фьев) (April 271, 1891 – March 5, 1953) was one of the Soviet Unions greatest composers. ...

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 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. , This article is about the town in Wales. ... Llanberis is a village in Gwynedd, Wales, lying beside the Llyn Padarn lake in Snowdonia. ... Llan Ffestiniog, also known as Ffestiniog or Llan is a small town in Gwynedd, traditional county of Merionethshire, north Wales, lying south of Blaenau Ffestiniog. ... Ffrith is a small village in Llanfynydd parish in Flintshire, north-east Wales. ...

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), Ueueteotl (an Aztec god) and El Ouaer (a retired Tunisian football goalkeeper). El-Aaiún or Laâyoune (Arabic: العيون, transliterated al-`ayÅ«n), is the unofficial capital of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony now mostly controlled and occupied by Morocco. ... Chokri El Ouaer (born August 15, 1966) is 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. Aeolian means related to, caused by, or carried by the wind; see eolian. ... For the geologic time, see eon (geology). ... Original Eau de Cologne Bottle of Original Eau de Cologne Bottle of Eau de Cologne Trojnoj Eau de Cologne (French for water of Cologne, Kölnisch Wasser in German) is a type of light perfume that originated in Cologne, Germany and is defined by its typical concentration of about 2... Goblins rule Ouagadougou is run by goblins who come out at night and the people you see walking around in the town are actually goblins in robotic suits that make them look like people. ... For the photographer, see Weegee. ... British English (BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere in the Anglophone world. ...

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. Collins was a Scottish printing company founded by a schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819. ... A modern crwth in its case The crwth is an archaic stringed musical instrument, associated particularly with Wales, although once played widely in Europe. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ... Vladimir Vladimirovich Shcherbachev, (also Shcherbachyov) (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Щербачё́в, born: January 24, 1889 Warsaw – died: March 5, 1952 Leningrad) was a Russian composer of the Soviet era. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ...

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, 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. Bedellium (Hebrew bedolach) was probably an aromatic gum like balsam that was exuded from a tree, probably one of several species in the genus Commiphora. ... Bwana is a Swahili word which is used in an equivalent way to several English forms of address. ... Tsar, (Bulgarian цар�, Russian царь; often spelled Czar or Tzar in English), was the title used for the autocratic rulers of the First and Second Bulgarian Empires since 913, in Serbia in the middle of the 14th century, and in Russia from 1547 to 1917. ... A dvandva or copulative or coordinative compound refers to two or more objects that could be connected in sense by the conjunction and. Dvandvas are common in some languages such as Sanskrit, where the term originates, and Japanese, but less common in English (The term is not often found in... Fjord in Sunnmøre, Norway Geirangerfjord, Norway A fjord (or fiord) is a long, narrow estuary with steep sides, made when a glacial valley is filled by rising sea water levels. ... Binomial name Gmelina arborea Roxb. ... Jnana is the Sanskrit term for knowledge. ... For the Bollywood film of the same name see Kshatriya Kshatriya (Hindi: , from Sanskrit: , ) is one of the four varnas, or castes, in Hinduism. ... Mbaqanga is a style of South African music that is usually sung by people from rural areas. ... The siemens (symbol: S) is an SI derived unit of measurement for electric conductance, being the inverse of the ohm (Ω), named after Werner von Siemens. ... For other uses, see Mnemonic (disambiguation). ... The mridangam is a percussion instrument from South India. ... The Mwera are an ethnic and linguistic group based in southern Tanzania. ... There are two versions of Ndebele in South Africa, they both belong to the Nguni group of Bantu Languages. ... Ngaio is originally a Maori word. ... Currency signs • ¤ ฿ • ₵ • ¢ • $ • â‚¡ • B/. • â‚« • € • Æ’ • ₲ • â‚­ £ • ₤ • Lm • â‚¥ • • ₱ • P • R • Sk • ₨ ৲ • S/. • ৳ • R$ • $ • â‚® • â‚© • Â¥ • zÅ‚ • â‚´ • ₪ ₳ • â‚¢ • â‚° • ₯ • â‚  • â‚£ • ℳ • ₧ • I/.• Kčs 10 Pfennig iron coin 1917 German Empire 5 Pfennig iron coin 1915 German Empire 1 Pfennig coin 1950 Deutschland 1918 25 pfennig iron coin German Empire. ... This article is about human pneumonia. ... Binomial name Lagopus mutus (Montin, 1781) The Ptarmigan (Lagopus mutus) is a small (31-35 cm) bird in the grouse family. ... Qawwali (Urdu: قوٌالی, Hindi: क़वाली) is the devotional music of the Chishti Sufis of the Indian Subcontinent. ... The qintar (also spelt qindar or qindarkë, plural qintars, qindars or qindarka) is a small currency unit of Albania. ... Qoph or Qop is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet (in abjadi order). ... In music, dynamics refers to the volume or loudness of the sound or note, in particular to the range from soft (quiet) to loud. ... Detail of the face of Mona Lisa showing the use of sfumato, particularly in the shading around the eyes. ... The sjambok is the traditional heavy leather whip of South Africa, sometimes seens as synonymous with Apartheid but actually much older and still used outside the offiical judiciary. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see Tsunami (disambiguation). ... Tsar, (Bulgarian цар�, Russian царь; often spelled Czar or Tzar in English), was the title used for the autocratic rulers of the First and Second Bulgarian Empires since 913, in Serbia in the middle of the 14th century, and in Russia from 1547 to 1917. ... The Xhosa (IPA ( )) people are speakers of Bantu languages living in south-east South Africa, and in the last two centuries throughout the southern and central-southern parts of the country. ... The xyphoid process or xiphoid process is a small cartilaginous extension to the lower part of the sternum which may become ossified in the adult. ... For other uses, see Yggdrasil (disambiguation). ... The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. ... General Name, Symbol, Number yttrium, Y, 39 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 3, 5, d Appearance silvery white Standard atomic weight 88. ... Złoty. ... A zwitterion (from German Zwitter — hybrid, hermaphrodite) is a compound with acidic and basic groups in the same molecule. ...

Q without U

Main article: List of English words containing Q not followed by U

Qwerty, one of the few native English words with q and no u in current usage, is derived from the first six letters of a standard keyboard layout. ...

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). Genera See text The Hamamelidaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Saxifragales, including 27 genera and about 80-90 species, all shrubs and small trees. ...

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). Subfamilies Faboideae Caesalpinioideae Mimosoideae References GRIN-CA 2002-09-01 The name Fabaceae belongs to either of two families, depending on viewpoint. ... Genera Castanea - Chestnuts Castanopsis Chrysolepis - Golden chinkapin Colombobalanus Cyclobalanopsis Fagus - Beeches Formanodendron Lithocarpus - Stone oaks Quercus - Oaks Trigonobalanus The family Fagaceae, or beech family, is characterized by alternate leaves with pinnate venation, flowers in the form of catkins, and fruit in the form of nuts, one to seven in a...

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). A motile asexual spore utilizing a flagellum for locomotion. ...

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. For the song by Linkin Park, see QWERTY (song). ...

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. Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). ... The Hoi Polloi march in a protest for more rights. ...

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^{[citation needed]}). There are at least two eleven-letter words, both rare: proterotype and rupturewort. For the song by Linkin Park, see QWERTY (song). ... Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Five, were long time standards of government agencies, newsrooms, and sales offices. ...

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. For other uses, see Hadassah (disambiguation). ... Haggadah for Passover, 14th century Haggadah in Hebrew means Telling. ... Haskalah (Hebrew: השכלה; enlightenment, education from sekhel intellect, mind ), the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the late 18th century that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew, and Jewish history. ... For the Our Gang (Little Rascals) character, see Carl Switzer. ...

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. Species See text Aegilops is a genus of plants belonging to the family Graminaceae. ...

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. Species - Lleuque - Miro - Matai Prumnopitys is a genus of conifers belonging to the Podocarp family, Podocarpaceae. ... Chełmno is a town in northern Poland with 22,000 inhabitants (1995) and the historical capitol of Chelmno Land also known as Kulmland. ...

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 article: 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 Wiktionary:Appendix:Palindromic words for a comprehensive list. For the movie, see Palindromes (film). ...

Kangaroo words

Main article: Kangaroo word

A kangaroo word is a word that contains all letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning. A kangaroo word is a word that contains 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 markka or mark was the currency used in Finland from 1861 until January 1, 1999 (in practice on January 1, 2002), when it was replaced by the euro (€). The currency code used for the markka was FIM, and the usual familiar notation was a postfix mk. ... The Lion King is the 32nd film in the Disney animated feature canon, and it also was the highest-grossing traditionally animated feature film ever released in the United States. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä — by Charles Gleyre In ancient Greek literature, Nausicaa (often rendered Nausicaä; Greek: Ναυσικάα[1]), burner of ships, a daughter of King Alcinous (Alkínoös) of the Phaeacians and Queen Arete, appears in Homers Odyssey (Odysseía). ... Umeå [˘ʉməoː] is a city and a municipality in Västerbotten County, in northern Sweden. ... Nisgaa flag Mask with open eyes, worn during winter halait ceremonies, 18th–early 19th century The Nisaa (pronounced Nis-gah) are of the First Nations of Canada. ...

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. Toshiba Corporations headquarters (Center) in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo Toshiba Corporation sales by division for year ending March 31, 2005 Toshiba Corporation ) (TYO: 6502 ) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ... Elba (bottom centre) from space, February 1994. ...

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: An anagram dictionary is a specialist dictionary designed for use in solving word puzzles such as crosswords, or for playing games such as Scrabble. ...

• 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: Taramasalata is a Greek dish, often served as a meze. ... Vishnu (IAST , Devanagari ), (honorific: Sri Vishnu) also known as Narayana is the Supreme Being (i. ... Abracadabra (sometimes spelled Abrakadabra) is a word used as an incantation. ...

• 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)

Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... This article is about an early text based computer game. ... This is about the wasp genus. ...

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.) The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

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. In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, mostly commonly a vowel. ... A modern crwth in its case The crwth is an archaic stringed musical instrument, associated particularly with Wales, although once played widely in Europe. ... Merriam-Webster, originally known as the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is a United States company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Websters An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ... Look up Cwm in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Cwm or its initials may refer to: In computer science: Common Warehouse Metamodel; also a prototype Semantic Web inference engine developed by Tim Berners-Lee and others (originally Closed-World Machine) In geology: a corrie In the Welsh language: a corrie and... This article is about the geological formation. ... Perspective view of the Himalaya and Mount Everest as seen from space looking south-south-east from over the Tibetan Plateau. ...

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. Species See text. ... This article is about the Modern English personal pronoun. ... For other uses, see Eye (disambiguation). ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses of A, see A (disambiguation). ... Look up eh in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

See also

• Homophone
• List of commonly confused homonyms

Wikitionary appendices This article is about the term in linguistics. ... Note: correctly, a pair of homonyms are two words pronounced and spelled identically but differ in meaning, a pair of homophones are pronounced identically but differ in meaning and a pair of homographs are spelled identically but differ in meaning. ...

• List of dialect-independent homophones
• List of dialect-dependent homophones

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]}. Look up homograph in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... , Reading is a town, unitary authority (the Borough of Reading) and urban area in the English county of Berkshire. ... Front of the original Blackwells bookshop. ...

See also List of English homographs. List of homographs (also known as heteronyms) in English. ...

Self-antonyms

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) 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) An auto-antonym (or, more properly, autantonym), or contronym (sometimes misspelled contranym) is a word with a homonym that is also an antonym. ...

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. Species About 100 species, including: Myristica argentea Myristica fragrans Myristica malabarica The nutmegs Myristica are a genus of evergreen trees indigenous to tropical southeast Asia and Australasia. ... The macule is the simplest dermatological lesion. ...

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 largest and the smallest element of a set are called extreme values, or extreme records. ... In mathematics, especially in order theory, a maximal element of a subset S of some partially ordered set is an element of S that is not smaller than any other element in S. The term minimal element is defined dually. ... Tama may mean: Person or being: Sam Fatu, a professional wrestler, uses this name amongst others Hazel Tama a Bosnian actress. ... The Tamar is a river in south western England, that forms most of the border between Devon (to the east) and Cornwall (to the west). ... Soy sauce (US) or soya sauce (UK) is a fermented sauce, made from soybeans (soya beans), roasted grain, water and sea salt (US will use salt unless otherwise stated). ... Type Species Saguinas ursula Hoffmannsegg, 1807 = Simia midas Linnaeus, 1758 Species 17 species, see text The tamarins are any of the squirrel-sized New World monkeys from the family Cebidae, classified as the genus Saguinus. ... Binomial name L. This article refers to the tree. ...

The one-syllable word are, with the addition of one letter, becomes area, a word with three syllables. This article is about the physical quantity. ...

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).

ough is a combination in the English language. ...

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 longest word in English depends upon the definition of what constitutes an English word. ... Look up Antidisestablishmentarianism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most successful dictionary of the English language, (not to be confused with the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English, formerly New Oxford Dictionary of English, of... The longest word in English depends upon the definition of what constitutes an 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. Suresh Joachim, minutes away from breaking the ironing world record at 55 hours and 5 minutes, at Shoppers World, Brampton. ... Look up floccinaucinihilipilification in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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. Chemical nomenclature is the system for naming chemical compounds. ... Benzene is the simplest of the arenes, a family of organic compounds An organic compound is any member of a large class of chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. ... A representation of the 3D structure of myoglobin, showing coloured alpha helices. ...

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 (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. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the longest English word of one syllable is the ten-letter scraunched, appearing in a 1620 translation of Cervantes Don Quixote. ... For the computer operating system, see Syllable (operating system). ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

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 bulb, depth, month, pint, 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 Sussex surname "Gorringe"^[3]. A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry. ... Meter (non-American spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of verse. ... Look up orange in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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 (this is sometimes called Procrustean rhyme). 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. Enjambement is the breaking of a linguistic unit (phrase, clause or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. ... Theseus and Procrustes, Attic red-figure neck-amphora, 570–560 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. ... A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry. ... Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic. ... Stephen Joshua Sondheim (b. ... Willard Richardson Espy (11 December 1910–20 February 1999) was a U.S. editor, language author, philologist, writer, and poet. ...

A song famous for this style of rhyme was Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song. Arlo Davy Guthrie (born July 10, 1947) is an American folk singer. ...

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)

References

1. ^ Berry, Mary: "Evovae", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 6 2006), [1]
2. ^ Fun with Words – Consecutive letters
3. ^ From the television programme QI

For other uses, see QI (disambiguation). ...

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

The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics is the journal of record for logologists. ... The belief that certain words are inherently funny, for reasons ranging from onomatopoeia to phonosemantics to sexual innuendo, is widespread among people who work in humor. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... . ... This is a set of lists of personal and place names that are pronounced in a way not easily deduced from the spelling or in a way at variance with a better known name of the same spelling. ... Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (IPA pronunciation: ) is an English word in the song with the same title in the musical film Mary Poppins. ... For the John Vanderslice album, see Cellar Door (album). ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The phrase Siamese twins in the context of the English language refers to a pair or grouping of words that is often used together as an idiomatic expression and usually conjoined by the words and or The expression take it or leave it is an example of Siamese twins. ... Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern. ... A lipogram (from Greek lipagrammatos, missing letter) is a kind of writing with constraints or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is missing, usually a common vowel, the most common in English being e (McArthur, 1992). ...

External links

• Word Oddities
• Word Trivia
• Strange and Unusual Dictionaries
• What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean?
• Fun with words