Word Trivia -
Sally Bradley May 11, 2012 at 8:16 am #
Nothing rhymes with Gagne, either. Thank you, SportsCenter commercials, for that bit of trivia. 🙂
JennyM May 11, 2012 at 10:58 am #
This was fun! But, dude, like, what’s a typewriter?
😉
Anita Mae May 11, 2012 at 1:33 pm #
I love this post!
I look for palindromes in the serial numbers of paper money. Numismatists refer to these bills as “radar notes”.
I’m shaking my head that “humongous” wasn’t listed as one of the official “ous” words. It’s even listed on my Dictionary.com iphone app. When will the academic world wake up? (*wink)
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Stuart September 7, 2015 at 5:52 pm #
There are a number of words valid in North American English Scrabble that contain the pair “uu” and are not one of the derivative words of vacuum. The number increases in World English Scrabble. Four of these other words are muumuu, duumvir, continuum, and menstruum.
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Stuart September 7, 2015 at 6:04 pm #
There are over 50 such words that have a double-i [ii] in the word and are recognized in American English. In International English that total is near double. Some of the more common words (other than taxiing, skiing, and derivatives) are radii, alibiing, and shanghaiing.
Edmund A Buley May 22, 2012 at 2:59 am #
After reading the
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Stuart September 7, 2015 at 5:23 pm #
unkempt is formed from combining the  negative prefix un- with kempt. Kempt is the past participle of the now obsolete word kemb, a verb that meant ‘to comb’. The word is from Middle English kemben, from Old (Anglo-Saxon) English cemban “comb”.
Carlos R. January 1, 2015 at 2:30 pm #
The longest word in english that can be written using only consonants is:
Rythms
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Stuart September 7, 2015 at 5:03 pm #
The longest word I know written with all consonant letters is the 7-letter interjection tsktsks. And, the y in rhythms is a vowel.
It had been taught to school children that the vowels were A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y (and sometimes W).  With the rarity of words with W as a vowel (such as in the loanwords cwm and crwth), and primarily due to spelling reform, W has been generally ignored as a sometimes vowel letter. Y, in contrast, is used extensively as both a vowel and consonant.  It is a consonantal letter, but not always.
Gio June 3, 2015 at 7:55 am #
About towns with vowels only, how about Oia on the lovely (and famous) greek island of Santorini?
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Stuart September 7, 2015 at 4:36 pm #
“Stewardesses” and “reverberated” are not the two longest words of the English-language that can be typed with only the left hand. “Sweaterdresses”, as a 14-letter word, is two letters longer.
The word “hypolimnion” (the lower layer of water in a stratified lake) may not be a common word, but it is a word of the English language, and it is three letters longer than “lollipop”.
The claim that “uncopyrightable” as the only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is false. The word “dermatoglyphics” (the study of the lines and ridges of skin markings, such as in fingerprints) is another 15 letter word that has no letter repeated. In English, adjectives are often used as nouns. In such use the adjective can be pluralized. At 16 letters, the word “uncopyrightables” has been noted in a few law review documents.
There does not appear to be a perfect rhyme in the English language for month, but orange, silver, and purple each have at least one perfect rhyme. For orange there is the botanical term sporange (a variant of sporangium – a spore sac). Silver has chilver, a dialectal word for a one-year old female lamb, or its mutton. And, also dialectal, but from Scottish-English, are curple (a horse’s rump) and hirple (to cease walking or to walk as if lame)  for purple.
It is incorrect to say “only” without further qualifications. “Dreamt” is not the only English word ending in the letters “mt”. There are also the derivatives redreamt, undreamt, daydreamt, and outdreamt.  For words ending in “dous”, besides the given four, there are amadous, amphipodous, apodous, arthropodous, biohazardous, cephalopodous, chilopodous, cynopodous, decapodous, frondous, gasteropodous, gastropodous, hybridous, iodous, isopodous, jeopardous, ligniperdous, molybdous, multifidous, myriapodous, nefandous, nodous, nonhazardous, octopodous, ostracodous, palladous, paludous, polypodous, pudendous, rhizopodous, rhodous, sauropodous, schizopodous, solipedous, splendidous, steganopodous, tetrapodous, ultrahazardous, unhazardous, untremendous, uropodous, vanadous, vodous, and voudous.
Besides “abstemious” and “facetious” being words where each of the five standard vowels are used once each in the word, there are more than the two given. “Abstentious”, “arsenious”, “caesious”, “parecious”, “halfseriously” (for which there is also the hyphenated “half-serious”), and the word derivatives “abstemiously” and “facetiously” also fit the criteria noted.
Longer than the 10-letter word “typewriter”, the 11-letter “rupturewort” (a common old world herb) can also be formed from only letters on one row of a qwerty-keyboard.
The name of Hawaiian city, ʻAiea, actually begins with the Hawaiian consonantal letter, the okina. Still, the suburban community’s name  is spelled with only vowels in its Anglicized-spelling. But the claim that Aiea, Hawaii is the only city which is spelled completely with vowels is not accurate. Aue in Germany near the outlet of the river Schwarzwasser is also written with vowel letters.
Not all cities are assigned Anglicized names, and are written in their native alphabet with only vowel letters. Using Google Maps, one can locate the town Å in Tranøy, Norway, another town Å in Lofoten, Norway, the town Ea in the Basque area of Spain, and the municipality Ii in the Northern Ostrobothnia region Finland.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” may be the best known known pangram (a word, phrase or sentence  which uses every letter of the alphabet at least once), but other pangrams do exist (perhaps the reason the word pangram exists). “Veldt jynx grimps waqf zho buck.” is a pangram that uses each letter but once. The uncommon words can be paraphrased as “A grass-plains wryneck climbs upon a male yak-cattle hybrid that had been donated under Islamic law.”