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        riddles >> easy >> Special words for the english language
        
(Message started by: Lightboxes on May 18^th, 2003, 9:35pm)

Title: Special words for the english language
Post by Lightboxes on May 18^th, 2003, 9:35pm

1) What is the longest english word with only one vowel?
2) What word contains 3 pairs of consecutive letters?
EX:xxxxxAABBCCxxxxx
3) What words have no other words that rhyme with it?

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by BNC on May 19^th, 2003, 2:13am

I'm not an English speaker, but I do seem to recall in either a movie or a PC game that the answer for (3) is [hide]orange[/hide]

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by THUDandBLUNDER on May 19^th, 2003, 3:13am

2) [hide] bookkeeper[/hide]

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by mistysakura on May 19^th, 2003, 4:32am

3. [hide]Silver, month[/hide]

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Jamie on May 19^th, 2003, 5:52am

(1) Depends on whether or not Y is considered to be a vowel.
(3) Also [hide]chimney[/hide]. BNC, was the computer game one of the Monkey Island series by any chance?

Another question:

(4) Which English word has the longest run of consecutive consonants (taking Y to be a consonant).

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by James Fingas on May 19^th, 2003, 6:44am

For 1), I don't know, but I've always thought strengths had a lot of consonants in it...

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Lightboxes on May 19^th, 2003, 8:34am

gj everyone

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by BNC on May 19^th, 2003, 12:10pm

Links to related sites: here (http://rinkworks.com/words/oddities.shtml), here (http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/wordtriv.htm), and here (http://plex.us/archives/word.html).

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Leonid Broukhis on May 19^th, 2003, 12:21pm

on 05/19/03 at 05:52:26, Jamie wrote:

(1) Depends on whether or not Y is considered to be a vowel.
(4) Which English word has the longest run of consecutive consonants (taking Y to be a consonant).

It is not [hide]syzygy[/hide], is it?

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by maryl on May 19^th, 2003, 12:59pm

3. [hide]purple[/hide] and I know there are at least a couple more; just can't think of them right now.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by mistysakura on May 20^th, 2003, 4:59am

Doesn't [hide]chimney[/hide] rhyme with words like [hide]monkey?[/hide] As usual, your non-native speaker is willing to show her faults.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Chronos on May 20^th, 2003, 3:46pm

No, because you need to rhyme everything from the last stressed syllable to the end. Since both of those words are stressed on the first syllable, they don't rhyme. On the other hand, "monkey" and "funky" do rhyme, because both syllables match, and "about" and "without" also rhyme, because in those words, the stress is on the second syllable, so you don't need to match the first.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Speaker on May 20^th, 2003, 7:39pm

For number 1

There is a guy that helps the accountants, he is the [hide]subbookkeeper[/hide].

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Jamie on May 21^st, 2003, 6:48am

To Leonid: No, syzygy, desipte being a really cool word, has only 6 consecutive consonants. The word I'm thinking of has 9.

It's probably also the answer to (1) if Y is assumed to be a consonant.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Sir Col on May 22^nd, 2003, 1:29am

1) This question depends on how you interpret it. Does it mean, of all its letters, it contains only one vowel or only one particular vowel throughout? Taking the first interepretation: dystrophy, skylights, sprightly, strengths, stylishly and synchrony all contain 9 letters and only one vowel, but 'strengths' has to be the favourite as it doesn't contain the pseudo vowel, y. Interestingly, I believe that 'stengthlessness' is the longest word that fits the second interpretation of the problem.
2) There are no words in the English language that have 3 pairs of consecutive letters. In fact there are no words that have 2 pairs of consecutive letters.
4) Rhythms, polycrystalline and strychnine all have 7 consecutive consonants.

With regards to the non-rhyming words: purple and orange, how about... ?

I squirted my sister with a giant syringe
The entire contents of a pumpkin-sized orange.
Surprised when she started to bite, scratch and hair pull
Until I realised it had stained her skin purple!

:D

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by otter on May 22^nd, 2003, 10:31am

on 05/22/03 at 01:29:51, Sir Col wrote:

2) There are no words in the English language that have 3 pairs of consecutive letters. In fact there are no words that have 2 pairs of consecutive letters.

??? Lucy, you go some 'splaining to do. Especially in light of earliers posts, which gave bookeeper and subbookkeeper as examples.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by towr on May 22^nd, 2003, 10:56am

in subbookkeeper you have bbuukk, but the alphabet goes abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
not abukcdefghijlmnopqrstvwxyz, so though double, they're not consecutive in the sense of following each other alphabetically..

'sideeffect' would work for two consecutive double letters, weren't it for the fact that it's actually 'side effect'..

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by otter on May 22^nd, 2003, 2:51pm

on 05/22/03 at 10:56:24, towr wrote:

OK. But based on previous replies, I think that many of us understood the question to mean "three consective double letters", not necessarily in alphabetical order.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Sir Col on May 22^nd, 2003, 3:45pm

I found a longer word containing one single vowel and also fitting the criteria for the word containing the largest set of consecutive consonants: amblyrhynchus = a type of marine iguana.

Since saying that no words containing 2 pairs of consecutive letters exist, I've found the word, addeem (to award or adjudge). However, I'm pretty certain that no words containing 3 pairs of consecutive letters (alphabetically speaking) exists.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Speaker on May 22^nd, 2003, 8:56pm

on 05/22/03 at 15:45:05, Sir Col wrote:

I found a longer word containing one single vowel and also fitting the criteria for the word containing the largest set of consecutive consonants: amblyrhynchus = a type of marine iguana.

Which is the one single vowel, the "A" or the "U"? But, by the power invested in me, I addeem it a bug-eyed scaly word anyway. ;)

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Sir Col on May 23^rd, 2003, 4:48am

Oops! It seems that I need to go back to pre-school for a lesson in the alphabet and/or counting. :-[

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Kozo Morimoto on May 24^th, 2003, 5:41am

Does lozenge rhyme with orange?

I've been told that the only word that rhyme with 'Australia' is 'failure'. No wonder our national anthem sucks...

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Chronos on May 25^th, 2003, 10:37am

I wouldn't count "syringe" or "lozenge" as rhyming with "orange", but I would count "door hinge". And "n+1th" rhymes with "month". As for purple,

Roses are red
Violets are purple
Sugar is sweet
And so is maple surple.

Every word in the English language has something that rhymes with it; some just require a little more creativity than others ;).

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Kozo Morimoto on May 25^th, 2003, 6:46pm

I couldn't find a listing for 'surple' in dictionary.com ...

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Gerd on May 26^th, 2003, 1:01am

2) I know it's a word-construction:
If there is an opposition against the japanese 'Tenno', one could call it a 'Tenno-opposition'. ;)

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by iceburg9988 on May 26^th, 2003, 6:39pm

3) orange. sponge? im not sure about that one. but how about crispy? im not sure about that one either. ^-^;

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by wowbagger on May 27^th, 2003, 2:34am

on 05/26/03 at 18:39:00, iceburg9988 wrote:

3) orange. sponge? im not sure about that one.

Nah. In "orange", the stress falls on the first syllable. (See Chronos's post (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_easy;action=display;num=1053318931;start=0#11).)

Quote:

but how about crispy? im not sure about that one either. ^-^;

If that's a suggestion for a non-rhyming word, how about "wispy"?

Gerd,
I like your word. :)

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by MattyDK23 on May 27^th, 2003, 1:14pm

on 05/27/03 at 02:34:06, wowbagger wrote:

Nah. In "orange", the stress falls on the first syllable.

Orange has two syllables?

"Or-ange"..."Ora-nge". Weird. I just say it all in one. "Orange". And what about sponge? "Spo-nge"? Heh...

Regardless, they don't rhyme...but I say orange is one syllable.

Say, what syllable is the stress on in supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Jeremiah Smith on May 28^th, 2003, 12:16am

on 05/27/03 at 13:14:19, MattyDK23 wrote:

It's only one syllable if you mush it all together into "ornj". It's technically two... or-ange. [or-inj].

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has a lot of stressed syllables, since it's so long... When I say it, I stress "sup", "frag", "ex", and "do".

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by wowbagger on May 28^th, 2003, 1:53am

on 05/27/03 at 13:14:19, MattyDK23 wrote:

Orange has two syllables?

"Or-ange"..."Ora-nge". Weird. I just say it all in one. "Orange". And what about sponge? "Spo-nge"? Heh...

Regardless, they don't rhyme...but I say orange is one syllable.

Well, I admit was a bit careless in posting that. I didn't check beforehand how many syllables an orange has. Maybe syllable isn't even the correct linguistic term for what I meant, I don't know. Anyway, Merriam-Webster (http://www.webster.com/) lists it with two syllables. It also has this strange pronunciation with a silent "a". Well, I can't say it like that. :)

Quote:

Say, what syllable is the stress on in supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?

Hey, I didn't know that word! :D ;)

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Leonid Broukhis on May 28^th, 2003, 7:58am

Despite being a pseudo-word, invented by authors of the movie "Mary Poppins", supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is listed in Webster's Unabridged,
with stress on su, ca, fra, li, ex, al, do (main stress on do), and definition (used as a nonsense word by children to express approval), but, sadly, without any attribution.

Title: Re: Special words for the english language
Post by Chronos on May 29^th, 2003, 3:29pm

That's because the origin of the word is, in fact, unknown. It goes back to at least 1949 (so it wasn't coined for the 1964 movie), and possibly to 1918 or earlier. Cite (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msupercali.html)

Possibly an artifact of the song which popularized it, but the word seems to have emphasis in 4/4 time: The first syllables modulo 4 have strong emphasis, and the third syllables have a lesser emphasis. The penultimate syllable has the strongest emphasis beecause it's held for two beats.