Talk:English words with uncommon properties

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Older comments

"The word stewardesses is the longest word spelt solely with the left hand when typing properly using a QWERTY keyboard. Also, the word typewriter is the longest common word spelled solely with the top line of letters on a QWERTY keyboard."

I've heard sweaterdresses for the first one, although I'm not sure that's a real word. However, isn't "proprietor" as common a word as "typewriter"?

This page is ... in dire need of work. -- Zoe

A fun long word I've heard of is an obviously contrived word from phobialist.com: hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, the fear of long words. It's claimed that they've all come from official sources, but it's hard to imaging that not being a joke. I hope the next person to read this doesn't react too hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobialistically. ;) --Patteroast 17:16, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This page was (under a former name) proposed for deletion. The consensus was to keep. Here is the deletion debate:

Template:VfD-List of unusual English words

The fifth row of the "ough" table indicates that "thought" is sometimes pronounced "thort." I find this odd. Anyway, the table ought to identify those who pronounce it that way. -- Yath 06:36, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

In British English "AW" and "OR" are the same, and whoever wrote that table picked the wrong one to generalize. I fixed it. AJD 00:42, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Actually I've heard people say "thort" in AE. The most notable example would probably be Goofy. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 07:54, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Orange

There once was a man from Fort Orange

Who longed to make rhymes using "orange".

He gave up in despair,

Hung himself in midair,

Where he swings to and fro like a door-'inge.

Sorry, I had to. SigPig 17:29, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

It's about time people stopped perpetuating this myth. Lozenge rhymes with orange - case closed.

The once was a man from Land's End

Who sucked on a Fisherman's Friend

It taste not of orange

This strong minty lozenge

And his mate didn't appreciate the innuendo either

Shouldn't the references section mention orange and door hinge as they appeared in Monkey Island 3?

You're right about "lozenge", but only if you punctuate your claim with a colon:

"It's about time people stopped perpetuating this myth: lozenge rhymes with orange - case closed."

"Lozenge" does not rhyme with "orange", unless for some bizarre reason you pronounce "z" and "r" identically. They are however assonant, but that is not the same thing as rhyming. — Paul G 06:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

That's correct. On a similar note, can we delete the comment about "sporange", which is clearly not a word and irrelevant (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sporange). Cheers, Spuddddddd —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.60.90.97 (talk) 18:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll remove that statement, as Orange (word) clear indicates that this is false. However, I don't quite understand why the "r" in orange is considered part of the rhyme. Isn't rhyme defined as the part of a syllable excluding the onset?石川 (talk) 12:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe stress has something to do with it. That's why lozenge doesn't sound like it rhymes with orange to me (this is especially so for my dialect: [ˈlɑzɪndʒ] vs [ˈɔɻɨndʒ]. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I see. And someone here says that he/she pronounces "orange" as a one-syllabled word. Is that so, and in which accent might this be? 石川 (talk) 14:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Squirrelled" has one syllable?

In what accent does the word "squirrelled" have only one syllable?

I don't know, but I say the whole thing in one syllable, and I'm from the Midwestern United States, which would be General American. I can't "speak" for everyone though. -JJLeahy 22:00, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm also a Midwesterner, and I can't imagine how to pronounce "squirrelled" as only one syllable. Michael Hardy 14:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Depends on how you speak, but to me it's one syllable. Rhymes with world. Amber388 15:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Ditto for the US/Mid-Atlantic. How else would it be pronounced? samwaltz 16:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Ditto for Rocky Mountain region (born West coast). I'm also curious how you would pronounce squirrelled with two sylables. Is it something akin to 'skwir-reld', and if so which part has the stress? -Âme Errante 09:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Though I've never used squirel as a verb I'd pronounce it with two but I can imagine how it'd become one in some dialects. Jimp 05:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I do believe that "squirrelled" is actually two syllables, thus should not be included in this catagory. In the American Heritage Dictionary it has it pronounced with two syllables (skwŭr'-əled)"squir-relled" = two syllables. I think this should be researched, omitted, or have some disclaimer attached to it. Such as SOME pronounce it as one syllable, etc. - Jeeny 02:50, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shortest word with no vowel

I think the shortest word with no vowel is "shy". Should this be added too?

Why, you should try to think of others ... my, my, my - by DavidWBrooks 00:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The "y" in "shy", "why", "try", "my" and "by" is a vowel. The "y" in "yes" is not. There are no words in English that have no vowels, except invented words, abbreviations, and perhaps the Welsh borrowings on a technicality, as the article notes. JRM · Talk 14:39, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Mmmm, are you sure about that? Markb 13:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, JRM is quite correct, despite my joking response. The vowel list is a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y - that rule exists for these very occasions. - DavidWBrooks 15:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Er, I was refering to the word "mmmm"! Markb 09:38, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

This is a common mistake caused by confusing the two meanings of the word "vowel". The first meaning refers to the sound - hence "a", "e", "i", "o" and "u" are all vowels, and so is "y" when it has the same sound as "i" (as in "my", etc). In this sense, the sounds represented by "oo" (as in "food"), "ee" (as in "feed") and many others are also vowels, and so there are actually many more than five or six vowels in English (see the article on "vowel").

The second meaning refers to the letters of the alphabet that represent a vowel: in this case, there are five that always represent a vowel ("a", "e", "i", "o" and "u") and two others that sometimes do ("y", as in "my", and "w" in some words borrowed from Welsh, such as "cwm") (see the section on written vowels in the article on "vowel"). By this definition, there are five, six or even seven vowels in English.

Most of us are learn only the second meaning at school, whereas linguists usually mean the first. So when using the word "vowel", it's important to be clear which meaning is intended. — Paul G 06:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleave

I wonder if this is the proper page. "Cleave" is the only word that I know of that is it's own antonym. "Cleave" can be used to describe joining things together or taking them apart. Harvestdancer 23:39, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

How about fast (move quickly, fix in one spot) enjoin (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done)? - DavidWBrooks 23:56, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, you know a few more than I do. Now the question is - is this the proper article to include them? Harvestdancer 00:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. I put in a short section "self-anyonyms". - DavidWBrooks 11:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Title

Can anyone think of a better name for this page? Matt 02:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC).

[edit] Organization of this page

This article is so long that it's hard to see how it is organized, but some subsections that seem out of place. I just moved a couple of them - antonyms and typewriter words - to the bottom, but I'm not at all certain that's the best place.

To assist in deliberation, here is the current (12/20/05) setup:

Combination of letters

many vowels
many consonants
alternating vowels and consonants
repeated letters
unusual word endings
unusual word beginnings
Q without U
other unusual spellings ('w' as vowel)
letters in alphabetical order
Palindromes
First and last words by reversed spelling
First and last words in anagram dictionary

Pairs and groups of words

Homophones
Homographs
Self-antonyms
Sequence of words formed by addition of letters
‘ough’ words

Long Words

no heading on article
Longest one-syllable word

Unrhymable words

Words with large number of meanings

Acronyms as words

Typewriter words

"Palindromes" seems out of place, but I'm not sure where it could go. It would also be nice to think of a general category heading for the last four, oddball categories. - DavidWBrooks 14:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think typewriter words should go back under under "Combinations of letters". Also, please don't get too cavalier about deleting stuff unless you have something better to replace it with. I understand you feel there are too many examples, but it is inevitable that an article about words with unusual properties will to a large extent consist of ... erm ... examples of words with unusual properties. Matt 02:50, 22 December 2005 (UTC).

I trimmed a couple of lists of 10 examples of so-and-so to 5 examples, which I don't think is excessive; they get across the topic about without making the scroll-down so long that the reader gets lost. I'm itching to trip that too-long list of q-without-u words to just one or two of each type (e.g., a couple of Arabic names, instead of oodles of them, etc.). This article isn't supposed to be exhaustive, it's supposed to be illustrative. Probably what needs to be done is to create more alternate articles that can be linked to with a "see main article" link. - DavidWBrooks 11:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Inflammable

This article contains the following claim under autoantonymns, which I won't remove without consulting, though I do dispute it:

and "inflammable (the British usage of which is synonymous with flammable, while an American would take it to mean fire-proof)."

My general experience as a native speaker of American English is that inflammable can mean either "able to be ignited" or "impervious to ignition" in everyday experience depending on context, a confusion that frequently features in cartoon humor. My Websters' seems to confirm this, listing both meanings (with fire-proof first.) Perhaps this should be clarified? Xoloz 00:37, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

If you're confident that current American English usage allows either meaning then I would just go ahead and change it... Matt 23:10, 28 December 2005 (UTC).

"Inflammable" is an auto-antonym in American English as well as British usage, because it means both one thing and the opposite. - DavidWBrooks 00:26, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I am a speaker of American English, and I have to say that I have always considered inflammable to mean "capable of being inflamed", and never "fireproof". Flammable, of course, developed because of the misleading nature of inflammable, but for me the original word has not changed. and if I needed a direct antonym to flammable, I would use non-flammable. I might just be being pedantic, though. Lesgles (talk) 02:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't say pedantic so much as incorrect: inflammable has never meant "capable of being inflamed" - it has always meant the opposite, much to everybody's vast confusion. Web hunt finds etymology is from medieval Latin inflammabilis meaning "liable to inflammation." - DavidWBrooks 10:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

What? "Inflammable" has always meant "liable to inflammation", meaning "something that can catch fire" (roughly). "Flammable" isn't even a word, except in the US. So why is Lesgles incorrect? Do you have any basis for your comment that 'inflammable has never meant "capable of being inflamed"'? --Shreevatsa 17:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

"Inflamable" means only that something is "capable of being inflamed" as in skin irritations or "not able to combust", but never "able to combust". If it meant "capable to combust" would that mean that "uninflammable" is a valid double-negative?Pksublime 19:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I just demonstrated the confusability of the word by being as muddle-headed as you can be. I was completely backwards: inflammable means (duh!) "capable of being inflamed" rather than "incapable of being flamed" which is what I was thinking of, if you can call it thinking. If nothing else, my sloppiness demonstrates why emergency officials frown on word. - DavidWBrooks 18:59, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I have read that "flammable" is used regularly instead of "inflammable" in industry so that people won't mis-interpret it as "non-flammable". They both mean something which burns easily, according to a dictionary found hither.Phonemonkey 14:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

uninflammable - a false double negative ... the in~ in inflammable is not the same one as the in~ in incapable. I've never heard/read anyone's ever using inflammable to mean the opposite of flamable.

Jimp 05:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Last word in dictionary

Could this be added to the article (or is there a seperate one). I originally added the town of Zzyzx, California under the "reversed order" when I misunderstood the catagory and have now removed it. Obviously "a" would be first, but I've seen this in a book somewhere and thought it might be interesting to add it here.Rt66lt 04:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The "not verified" tag

I've no reason to doubt the accuracy of any of the info on this page. However there are a number of little pieces of anecdotery contained here which ought to be supported by sources, the Blackwells Reading Bookshop being one. This is just the kind of page where someone could slip in a plausible-sounding but completely untrue factoid which could go unnoticed, be profilerated across all the sites which derive their content from WP, and thence become urban legend. We don't want that, do we? SP-KP 19:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, that one could be a hoax. The picture of the shop (on the Blackwell's Website) shows "The Friar Street Bookshop." --Nucleusboy 20:36, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Nearly EVERY statement in EVERY Wikipedia article is unsupported by sources, or may have once been supported by sources but has since undergone an unknown number of edits of unknown quality. A "plausible-sounding but untrue factoid" could easily be inserted unnoticed into nearly EVERY Wikipedia article. You might just as well slap the same banner on every page. IMO this banner should be reserved for articles where there is serious concern that large parts are in error, which you say is not the case here as far as you are concerned. Propose that the banner is removed and individual problem statements are addressed here. Otherwise the banner will just stay there forever. Matt 14:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC).

Just because many many other articles don't cite their sources, it doesn't mean that we should just lower our standards, in my opinion. As at least one other editor suspects that the article contains an inaccurate statement, I think the not verified tag should at least stay until a source is supplied for that. SP-KP 13:38, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps potentially inaccurate statements could be flagged with Template:Fact, rather than damning the whole article? Or start adding citations more generally? Tom Harris 14:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Go for it. SP-KP 14:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I've had a look through and I can't find a lot that is verifiable which is not cited, apart from the Blackwells quote referenced above. The majority of content is not verifiable from printed sources, only by an attempt to reproduce (e.g. by analysing a dictionary). This is hard to reference! Having said that, there doesn't appear to be much which is potentially objectionable; I would not expect references for anything left - I have removed the banner.

However, this isn't really my field, so I may have missed something! If you rate any of the statements as potentially inaccurate you may want to add Template:Fact tags of your own... Tom Harris 16:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tetete

Seems an interseting word :) Rich Farmbrough. 00:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. I have added it to the appropriate section. Matt 20:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

[edit] "Rhythmlessly"

the article says:

"Rhythmlessly" is the longest with only one vowel.

Please explain to a non-native English speaker how it is so. mikka (t) 20:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

No counting "y" as a vowel. - DavidWBrooks 20:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

That guess I did. Reason? The Y article says nothing. Not to say that vowel is sound, while "y" is letter. mikka (t)

The English rule for vowels is "a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y" because in most cases, "y" is considered a consonant; only occasionally it does the aural work of a vowel, as in words like "why" or "try". This isn't very logical, particularly when you're talking about a root word like "rhythm", which is oddly spelled (many native speakers misspell it). - DavidWBrooks 22:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

You are not listening to me: "y" is a letter, while vowel is a sound. Are you saying that "Rhythmlessly" is pronounced kinda sorta "rh'thmlessl'" in "correct" English (if one exists)? mikka (t)

A vowel isn't just a sound, it's also a letter; it's got two definitions. - 01:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, a native english speaker knows that there is a more informal definition for vowels: "A,E,I,O,U,sometimes Y" but our vowel article doesn't actually say that - it concentrates purely on the proper phonetic meaning. Maybe a change can be made to that article? Pcb21 Pete 10:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Since "y" functions as a vowel in this word, it has 3 vowels, not 1. It is not the longest word with only 1 vowel. JackofOz 11:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated letters

In the repeated letters section, the article implies that, aside from the spurious "subbookkeeper", no word has more than three consecutive pairs of letters. Anyone got a problem with adding "balloonneer" (an habitual pilot of a (hot-air) balloon?). Oh, and I'm not sure "æ" is considered one vowel by anyone, any more than an "fi" ligature is one letter. Pirate pete 22:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Can you cite any real-life uses of this word? Google gives a few hits, but all the ones I looked at are just commenting on its having four consecutive pairs of letters, not using it for real. I also cannot find it in any dictionary. This suggests it may just have been invented by word puzzlists. If that's the case then a mention should be made of this fact if it's included in the article at all.

Agreed - I don't think it's a real word. "Balloonist" is the term in the US. "Ballooner" (one e) is common. The "-eer" suffix seems artificial. - !!!!

[edit] Rhymes for words that supposedly have none

The surname "Gorringe" rhymes with "orange" in standard UK pronunciation. Mathematicians pronounce (n + 1)th (the ordinal number corresponding to n + 1) to rhyme with "month". — Paul G 07:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I've also heard "doorhenge" rhyming with "orange", but that's kind of a stretch.Cameron Nedland 16:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The words range, arrange and rearrange rhyme with orange. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 20.138.1.245 (talk • contribs) 12:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

That depends on your regional pronunciation, in my dialect they don't. thefunkygibson^T¤C 13:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The word engulf rhymes with wolf. samdeebee 21:06, 07 March 2007 (UTC)

Not in most dialects; engulf has /ʌ/ and wolf has /ʊ/, and these only merge (or merge before /l/) in some dialects. AJD (talk) 06:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The word "hirple" in old Scots rhymes with "purple", similar to the example of silver/chilver given in the article. I added this but I had my edit reverted because it was too trivial O_o thefunkygibson^T¤C 13:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unusual endings

Do any words besides Cajun and the slang Injun end in -jun? --Darksasami 21:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I can't think of any.Cameron Nedland 19:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated Words

I think this article should include a section about repeated words in sentences. I.E. "I was wondering if you had had a chance to look at this yet." and "I actually talked to him about this this morning." Pksublime 19:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

If the section is created, it should include this famous one, an english grammar examiner explaining his test marking: "Smith, where Jones had 'had', had had 'had had'. 'Had had' had the better mark." El Ingles 19:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

No, no, no. This article is English WORDS with uncommon properties, not English SENTENCES with uncommon properties (which might deserve an article, too, come to think of it) - DavidWBrooks 00:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

So when are we going to see that one? Pksublime 17:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is Wikipedia. You can get started any time you want to... samwaltz 16:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If we were to create this section, we would have to link it to the page with Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (Note the uppercase and lowercase letters) Also, there could be an infinite amount of the words, "Buffalo" and "buffalo" to still create a logical sentence, though its purpose is illogical. Mchoi815 06:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples?

In the section "Many vowels" the article says: "...conversely, a single letter may represent multiple vowels", which I understand from the context to mean that there are some English words in which a single letter is pronounced as a sequence of two or more different vowel sounds. I can't think of any examples - can anyone else? Matt 19:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Read

Shouldn't there be some sort of mention of "read", since it's a very common word with two different pronounciations and meanings? --Bearbear 21:54, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Present tense and past tense of the same verb doesn't seem terribly different, unlike, say, "wind" - moving air or clock movement. - DavidWBrooks 22:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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." says the article.

I can't think of any English word in which a single letter represents more than one vowel. Note that diphthongs are not multiple vowels. I'd suggest that this needs a rewrite unless someone can find such a word. Jimp 05:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I made more or less the same comment above. I have added an "examples needed" note to the text. Matt 01:18, 23 February 2007 (UTC).

when you look up "diphthong" in wiki, the word "kite" is listed. would this suit your needs here? 76.181.154.63 23:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)eli

[edit] Mississippi

Mississippi repeats the letter sequence "issi" but only by overlapping the i. It does, however, have two distinct occurrences of both the sequence "iss" and "ssi". Does this give it uniqueness in having two (slightly) different sequences of letters both repeated in the same word? --King Hildebrand 19:31, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Even if it does, that's a pretty obscure uniqueness and I would vote against mentioning it. Once you go down the "almost-exactly-repeated" road, who knows where you'll end up? - DavidWBrooks 21:05, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PN

In the article, it claims that "almost all common English words: either start with a vowel or S, or have a vowel or H, L or R as second letter, or both. The most common exceptions have N as second letter, preceded by G, K or P". I'm afraid I struggle to think of any words beginning pn. Can someone help? --Islomaniac 973 21:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

There's pneumonia, pneumatic and a number of other pneum- words, but I don't think that pn warrants a mention as one of the "most common exceptions". I think this whole paragraph was somewhat bogus (e.g. commoner combinations, such as tw and ps, were not even mentioned), and so I rejigged it a while ago. pn is no longer there. Matt 21:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Pint, Lint

It says that nothing rhymes with pint. Doesn't lint rhyme ? 125.23.36.216 06:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Pint has a long i, lint has a short i. - DavidWBrooks 12:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

In some variants of spoken English, the contraction of "may not" into "mayn't" produces a word that is a pretty good rhyme for pint. --King Hildebrand 17:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

No, mayn't would rhyme with paint would it not?Mchoi815 06:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Words with large numbers of meanings"

It says, for example, "set" has 63 meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary. However when I looked it up, I found 126 meanings, and many of these 126 split into a, b, c, d, ... and that's excluding all the phrases such as "set up", "set about" etc. Might the person who wrote this be using some compact and abridged version of the dictionary? -- 129.78.64.102 06:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sequences of words formed by the addition of letters

I believe the six-word sequence in which letters are added to the beginning of the words (hes, shes, ashes, etc...) can be extended to a seven-word sequence with "es" (acceptable in Scrabble, the spelling of the letter 's').

As far as I know that's spelled "ess". If the "es" spelling is supported by any sort of reliable source then we could add it... Matt 01:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC).

Scrabble allows a lot of 'words' that aren't commonly accepted as English. It's probably risky to go with the word being acceptable on the basis of being allowed in Scrabble. --Nucleusboy 01:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe that "es" is allowed as the plural of the letter "E", (e.g. There are two es in the word "letter") and yes, "S" is "ess". But then, if es is allowed for that reason, e as the name of the letter, is also a word, though not one admitted in a game that insists on words having more than one letter! Hence the sequence could be extended further. --King Hildebrand 17:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Words with four consecutive vowels: not that rare

Some fiddling about with grep and /usr/share/dict/web2 on my computer has informed me that there are in fact 164 words which have four consecutive vowels. You would think this would make four consecutive vowels not that extraordinary. --Nucleusboy 23:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The article says "The list of common words with four vowels in a row is also fairly short..." If any of those 164 words could be considered "common" and aren't already listed then I guess they should be, until (unlikely) the list becomes so long that the words aren't of note. Matt 13:36, 28 July 2007 (UTC).

I guess that the ones considered 'common' (in an extremely loose sense) might be

Aeaean
aqueous and derivatives
Asclepieion
beauish
chrysopoeia
cooee and derivatives
epopoeia
exsanguious
Hawaiian
homeoarchy
Iroquoian
lieue (unit of length)
several words with the stem -loquious
obsequious and derivatives
onomatopoeia
palaeoanthropology
pharmacopoeia
queue
Rousseauism and derivatives
sequoia
visuoauditory

Any comments? --Nucleusboy 17:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... most of the words in this list that are not already mentioned in the article seem pretty obscure to me. Maybe "Iroquoian" might be a candidate for inclusion. I was going to suggest "palaeoanthropology" too, but I think that's only because it happens to be a word I'm personally familiar with. It's in very few of the dictionaries indexed at Onelook.com ("paleoanthropology" has more hits). I can't see any others that one could reasonably call "common". Matt 01:06, 29 July 2007 (UTC).

It's a bit nit-picky, and doesn't address the underlying principle, I know, but, lieue is indeed a unit of length, but only in French. We have a perfectly acceptable English word for it, league. If you start admitting foreign words, where do you stop? --King Hildebrand 17:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples for 'grey area'

I see nothing wrong with including the following passage in the section discussing whether loanwords qualify as English:

Most sources agree 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.

Jeff Biggs claims that the passage is "unreferenced nonsense". Opinions? --Nucleusboy 14:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I do not believe that it is nonsense. Collins English Dictionary has a policy of italicising words that it doesn't consider to be fully naturalised (and yet are obviously considered sufficiently common in English texts to be included at all). In the 2000 edition, "Zeitgeist", "Schadenfreude" and "Weltanschauung" are all tagged like this, while "ballet", "ketchup" and "safari" aren't. Matt 13:34, 1 August 2007 (UTC).

My dictionary (2002 Compact Oxford Canadian) lists zeitgeist as "not naturalized in English". It doesn't list Schadenfreude or Weltanschauung. My second dictionary (Webster's New World, 1978) lists all three as foreign ("not completely naturalized"). My third dictionary (New Oxford American, electronic version) lists all three as "German" in the etymology, where "naturalized words" such as 'ballet' say "from French". I think this difference of opinion between different dictionaries would qualify as making the status of the latter words "less clear cut". Does Jeff Biggs have any issues with this statement? --Nucleusboy 14:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I must admit I didn't read it quite like that. I didn't read "less clear cut" as meaning we should necessarily be seeking out differences of opinion between dictionaries. I just read it as meaning that the word is not considered either entirely English or entirely foreign. As evidence of this, the fact that the words appear at all in English dictionaries indicates that they are to some extent part of the English vocabulary, yet the fact that a dictionary feels the need to mark them as "not naturalised", "German", or whatever, indicates that they are not felt to be truly English words. So, all dictionaries could agree on exactly where a word falls on the spectrum between "English" and "foreign", and yet the status of the word is still not "clear cut", if that makes any sense. Matt 00:57, 2 August 2007 (UTC).

Ja, that makes sense. The problem is that 'English' versus 'foreign' is entirely subjective, whereas we would be trying to pigeonhole words objectively if we just split them between entirely English and entirely foreign. --Nucleusboy 02:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strengths

This sentence

The longest word with only one vowel is strengths (9 letters), packing six consonant sounds into a single syllable

was changed to say 'eight consonant sounds'. Is this change correct, or did it say 'six sounds' because ng and th are digraphs, and thus only count as one sound? --Nucleusboy 23:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

"Six sounds" is correct. AJD 00:57, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

~~I make it seven: /strɛŋθs/~~ Sorry, six consonant sounds is indeed correct. — Paul G 06:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unrhymable words

I contest the assertion that beige, bulb, depth, kiln, month, pint, wasp, and wolf have no rhymes. At least three of these words have rhymes, if you are prepared to look hard enough:

beige rhymes with greige
kiln rhymes with the surname Milne (as in A. A. Milne)
month has a rhyme, although it is an obscure one. Mathematicians use "nth" as the ordinal number representing the value at position n in a list (and, indeed, this is used in non-technical English as a synonym of "umpteenth"). The ordinal coming after "nth" is "(n + 1)th". Note that this is not "(n + 1)st", because "n" is not necessarily a multiple of 10. This ordinal is pronounced "en plus oneth", and so can be said to rhyme with "month". (Similarly, "(n + 2)th" rhymes with "truth", "(n + 3)th" with "teeth", etc, but these are of less interest because there are already many other rhymes for these words.)

I am not aware of rhymes for the other words in the list, but I wonder how much research has been done to look for rhymes beyond a cursory glance at a rhyming dictionary, given that I am able to cross at least two off the list. — Paul G 07:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Update: the following are in the OED:

culb(e) (obsolete; no pronunciation given, so it not clear whether this could be a rhyme for bulb
knosp (rhymes with wasp); also cosp and rosp, but pronunciations are not given for these words
voulf (an obsolete Scottish form of wolf; no pronunciation is given, and this would not really count as it is a variant form)

Also, the surname Woolf and its variants rhyme with wolf, but these are probably all related to wolf (and have the same pronunciation) and so do not really count. — Paul G 07:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The ordinal after nth is certainly n+1st, not n+1th, in the usage among mathematicians I'm familiar with. I suppose that doesn't mean n+1th doesn't exist at all, though I've never heard it. AJD 14:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I would read it n plus one-th because the th is outside the parentheses. Otherwise, why not pronounce "second," "one plus first"? Mchoi815 06:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Eh? I think you mean, why not pronounce twenty-second "twenty-twoth"? But we do say "twenty-first" and "twenty-second", and in the same way we say "n plus first" and "n plus second". And if we said "one plus first", we'd say "one plus first", not "one plus oneth". AJD 14:39, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Challenging inclusion of euouae

In the subsection, "Words with many vowels", "euouae" is included based upon the assertion that it is "a type of cadence in mediaeval music". While it is true that it this is used to indicate a particular cadence, this is an abbreviation of "saeculorum. Amen", and not considered a word. When used, the constitutent vowels are separated by spaces, so that it appears "E u o u a e."

ns —Preceding unsigned comment added by ÞorsHammer (talk • contribs) 10:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] tachydysrhythmia

is it only me that finds tachydysrhythmia an interesting word having 12 consonants in a row. Double the number of consecutive consonants comapred to knightsbridge. Let the debate about 'y' begin!

Jccmoon 14:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

There's no need for a debate. All the ys in that word are vowels. --Nucleusboy 21:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources?

This is a fun and interesting article, but there aren't very many sources. For instance, a reversed-spelling dictionary would begin with a, aa, aab, aahc, aakkram... according to whom? Does such a dictionary exist (it does seem to be used in a game but we can't really reference that, can we?), or has a reliable source published a treatise on how it would begin if it existed? If such sources are not included, passages like that one look simply like original research, which as we all know is not allowed. -- Jao (talk) 18:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is this real?

~~"strawberry-raspberry (6) – a Japanese plant"~~

~~Strawberry-raspberry doesn't sound very Japanese...I think a hyperlink is in order here...~~

~~Lu na ke et 12:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)~~

Never mind. Lu na ke et 12:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pyramid words

I was surprised there wasn't any discussion of pyramid words (e.g. "sleeveless"), so I added it. I hope it fits. If not, delete it, but I find those words interesting so I thought it would be a good addition. biggins (talk) 21:38, 1 June 2008 (UTC)