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Home > English words with uncommon properties

1 Strange 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 using w to represent 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 as 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.

Arguably, however, 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.

Uncopyrightable, with fifteen letters, is the longest common word in English in which no letter is used more than once. Dermatoglyphics shares the distinction but is a less well-known word.

2 Combinations of letters

There is only one common word in English that has five vowel letters in a row: queueing (2 vowel sounds).

The place-name Knightsbridge has six consonant letters in a row (with four consonant sounds), as do the compound words latchstring and catchphrase. Twelfthstreet has seven in a row; it is normally two words but is sometimes used as one, as in a song title.

There are several words that feature all five vowels in alphabetical order, including abstemious , abstentious , facetious , arsenious, and (the shortest, at eight letters) caesious. Considering y as a vowel, the suffix ly can be added to the first three. Thus the shortest word containing six unique vowels in alphabetical order is facetiously (11).

The shortest word containing the five regular vowels is eunoia, at six letters, followed by sequoiaSequoia is the name of three species of trees in the family Cupressaceae: Coast Redwood, Giant Sequoia, and Dawn Redwood; three publically-owned lands in the Sierra Nevadas with Giant Sequoia groves: Sequoia National Park, Sequoia National Forest, and Gia at seven; but neither has them in alphabetical order.

The longest word with one vowel is strengths, packing six consonant sounds into a single syllable. The words psychorhythm s (13), polyrhythmPolyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. A simple example of a polyrhythm is 3 evenly-spaced notes against 2, with the 3-beat pattern being faster than the 2-beat pattern, so that they both take the same amount of time.s (11) and rhythmless (10) are longer, but each clearly uses the letter y as a vowel.

BookkeeperBookkeeper is the only word in the English dictionary with 3 consecutive double letters #REDIRECT Accountancy. has three consecutive doubled letters.

Despite the assertions of a well-known email prank, modern English does not have three words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are the only ones. (See external links for discussion.)

Dreamt is the only English word that ends in -amt. In American English, which prefers dreamed, there are none.

Aa, a type of lava, consists entirely of a doubled vowel.

3 Abnormal pairs or groups of words

EweThe English word ewe (pronounced as the word "you", /ju:/) is also the singular form for a female sheep. Ewe is an ethnic group from West Africa, in Ghana, Benin and Togo. It belongs to the Kwa group; see Ewe (people). Ewe is also the name of the language and youYou is the second person plural pronoun in English. In standard English, it serves as the second person singular pronoun as well. In modern standard English, you serves as both the nominative and oblique case. The genitive case is your and the possessive 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 Americans might well believe that a and eh form such a pair whereas other English speakers might not.

Al, Ala, Alan, and Alana are names all formed by adding an additional letter each time, ideal for a family of four.

The one-syllable word are, with the addition of one letter, becomes area, a word with three syllables.

The word stewardesses is the longest word spelt solely with the left hand when using a QWERTY keyboard.

The most notorious group of letters in the English language, ough, is commonly pronounced at least ten different ways. Ough is in fact a word in its own right; it is an exclamation of disgust similar to "ugh".

The original pronunciation in all cases was the last one. However the kh sound has disappeared from most modern English dialects. As it faded, different speakers replaced it by different near equivalents in different words. Thus the present confusion resulted.

The "ough"s in the English place name Loughborough are pronounced differently to each other, resulting in Luffburruh.

Tough, though, through, and thorough are all formed by adding an additional letter each time, yet none of them rhyme with each other.

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Topics: English Words With Uncommon Properties Word Vowel Letters...

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