The Play Of Words

Welcome to a playground of English words. Step right through the gate and watch some of our strangest and most whimsical words as they clamber over jungle gyms, bounce up and down on seesaws, swing on rings, careen down sliding boards, and merrily whirl around on merry-
go-rounds.

Most consecutive vowels. Words like aqueous and sequoia contain four consecutive vowels. Queueing contains five in a row, and the word queue has the distinction of being the only English word that retains its original pronunciation even when the last four letters are dropped. One word strings together all five major vowels: miaoued.

Vowels in order. At least five English words contain the five major vowels in order: abstemious, abstentious, adventitious, facetious, and parecious. At least six contain the five vowels in reverse order: duoliteral, quodliteral, subcontinental, uncomplimentary, unorien-
tal, and unnoticeably.

Most letters with one vowel. The longest common word in English that contains but a single vowel is the nine-letter word
strengths.

Repeated vowels. The longest common English words that contain one repeated vowel, and no other vowel, are defenselessness (15 letters, five e’s) and strengthlessness (16 letters, three e’s). The longest such state names are Tennessee (nine letters, four e’s) and Mississippi (11 letters, four i’s). The 16-letter word indivisibilities contains seven i’s and one e.

Most consecutive consonants. Six consonants in a row crowd the word latchstring.

Most letters with one consonant. Several five-letter words tie for the title. Eerie is the
best example.

Alphabet words. The words overstuffed and understudy contain four consecutive letters
of the alphabet__rstu__in order.

Most consecutive letter pairs. The best-known example of a word containing three double letters in a row is bookkeeper. Perhaps a person who works for a bookkeeper should be called a subbookkeeper.

Most consecutive dots. Beijing, Fiji, hijinks (a variant spelling of high jinks in some dictionaries) each contain three consecutive dotted
letters.

Letter words. A number of words, when pronounced, consist entirely of letter sounds__essay (SA) enemy (NME), excellency (XLNC). The longest such letter string is expediency (XPDNC).

Pronoun word. Has there ever been another word like ushers, which contains five personal pronouns in succession?—us,
she, he, her, hers.

Longest palindromic words. A palindrome is a word, sentence, or longer statement that is spelled the same when its letters are read in reverse order, as those who read on will see. The longest palindromic word ent-ered in English dictionaries is redivider (nine letters), although some chemistry handbooks include the 11-letter palindrome detartrated. The longest palindromic cluster embedded in an English word is composed
of the first 11 letters in sensuousness.

Bilingual reversal. Back in March, 1866, there appeared in Our Young Folks magazine an extraordinary English-Latin pairing that reads forward in English and backward in Latin, retaining the same meaning in both
languages and both directions.

Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use Love!
Evolves ut ira breve nefas sit; regna.
Binades. In a binade, a longer word is divided into two shorter words by taking alternate letters in order. Examples include lounge: lug (odd letters) and one (even letters) and schooled: shoe (odd letters) and cold
(even letters).

Snowball words. Snowball words gain bulk as they roll along, one letter at a time. A three-layer snowball word is damage: d am age. A four-layer example is fatherless: f at her less. A crystalline five-layer snowballer is
temperamentally: t em per amen tally.

Pyramid words. Words that contain one use of one letter, two uses of a second letter, and so on are called pyramid words. Two examples from our everyday vocabulary are Tennessee’s (one t, two n’s, three s’s and four e’s) and sleeveless (one v, two i’s three s’s and
four e’s).

Pair isograms. Some words consist entirely of pairs of letters, each pair occurring once. Among the best examples are teammate (eight letters, four pairs), intestines (10 letters, five pairs), shanghaiings (12 letters, six
pairs).

Most meanings. The hardest-working word in the English language is set, which in some unabridged dictionaries has almost two hundred meanings. Run usually runs a fairly close second.

Most difficult tongue twister. Many people consider the sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick to be the serpentine tongue twister in Eng-
lish.

Typewriter words. When we seek to find the longest English word that can be written on a single horizontal row of a standard typewriter keyboard, we natural place our fingers on the top row of letters__qwertyuiop__because five of the seven vowels repose there. From that we can type four 10-letter words: proprietor, perpetuity, repetoire, and, with delightful appropriateness, type-
writer.

Shortest pangrams. Many typists know the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog as a 33-letter sentence that employs every letter at least once. Such sentences are called pangrams. Here is a sampling of the best pan-
grams of even fewer letters:

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
(32 letters)
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz (31)
How quickly daft jumping zebras vex (30)
Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim (29)
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud (28)
Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymph (27)
Mr. Jock, TV Quiz Ph.D., bags few lynx
(26)

If you can come up with a 26-letter pangram that makes sense and does not resort to names or initials, rush it to me and I’ll make you famous.