"I'd like to buy a vowel." Most of us in the `civilized' world are familiar
with this oft-heard sentence in a popular TV game show. For those who are
not, it is a Hangman-like game where contestants identify words in several
categories by guessing their letters. Correctly guessing a consonant helps
in winning a prize, while one has to pay to guess a vowel. Imagine playing
this game and getting words having all five vowels? That wouldn't be very
exciting where you have to squander all your cash in buying the vowels. To
make it more tolerable, we've selected this week words that have all the
vowels once, but only once. And the vowels can be in any order. To see
the words with all the vowels, once and only once, AND in order, see the
archives for Oct 1997:
http://wordsmith.org/awad/themes.html.
this would have been a nice place for "words that use all the vowels in alphabetical order"... and also for "epuration".
Yeah, I was sorta (!) thinking that myself, believe it or not
.
Anna, I think you're developing a monomania.
Not that I blame you. I think those threads belong here too.
I was looking in the AWAD archives, hoping for inspiration for starting a new thread. I came upon the following by
sheer coincidence. I apologize for the extreme length, but
we can't link to any single entry, and it can be tedious to find one among the entire list. I think there is a lot here that people will find worth commenting on.
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Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 00:03:11 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--jalousie
X-Bonus: Multitasking allows screwing up several things at once.
jal.ou.sie \'jal-*-se_-\ n : a blind, window, or door with
adjustable horizontal slats or louvers for control of light and air
--
notice anything special about the word? it has all the vowels in its
spelling. and only once. - anu
--------
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 09:24:54 -0400
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--jalousie
I didn't intend to send a followup on today's mailing but
looking at the volume and enthusiasm of replies, I couldn't
keep without sharing them with you.
Many suggested the words facetious, abstemious and arsenious
all of which have all the vowels occuring only once and in
order. Among those who sent in one or more of these words are:
Linguaphiles Martha (albion.edu), Pete Cottrels (umd.edu),
Zach (att.com), Marc Picard (concordia.ca), Brian Battles
(arrl.org), Mortnsue (aol.com), Garthe Nelson (ucsb.edu),
C. Sudhama (mot.com), Evan Robinson (mit.edu), Ullas Gargi
(psu.edu), Guy Jacobs (ukans.edu), David Powers (flinders.edu.au)
Miriam Shlesinger (biu.ac.il, Israel) and Manojkumar Saranathan
(washington.edu). In addition, Saranathan came up with this
word with all the vowels in reverse order: duoliteral.
Linguaphile Tim Lee from datapath.co.uk recalled a vacation
he took years ago in California, where he saw the giant red-woods,
the sequoia trees. He points out that "Not only does 'sequoia'
have all the vowels and only once, it also has only two consonants."
Now, how about a crash course in French? Linguaphile Jean Wilmotte
hailing from ucl.ac.be ("be" is the country code for Belgium)
wrote to inform that jalousie has a second meaning in French --
jealousy. It had me thinking what jealousy had to do with venetian
blinds. But I didn't have to wait for long. Manfred Borzechowski
of alcatel.de (de = Germany) piped in with the etymology. Here
is a peek at the historical roots of the word:
Such blinds served in old Arabic ages to protect from being
seen when having an intimate relationship, so that nobody
else would become jealous.
Frits Stuurman from ruu.nl (nl = Netherlands, which incidentally, is
written as Nederland in Netherlands/Nederland/Holland) was reminded
of James Joyce's Ulysses where "there is also something about
aeiou = a.e. [initials of one of Joyce's friends, I seem to remember]
I owe you;"
Bruce Nevin of lightstream.com greped (grep is computerese for search)
in /usr/dict/words and sent a list of 54 words with all the vowels.
Did I say all the vowels? A couple of linguaphiles expressed doubt
whether I was forgetting `y' when I said the word `jalousie' has all
the vowels in it. Garthe of ucsb.edu had probably already thought of
it. He wrote: "the most remarkable word of this kind that I've found
is `facetious' which not only has all the vowels exactly once but also
in alphabetical order. It can even accommodate the `sometimes y'
clause with the addition of `ly' to form `facetiously', still in
alphabetical order."
On a cool, cloudy morning on the shore of Lake Erie...
Anu
jackie, your extensive quotes from the awad archives suggest two things to me:
1. it reinforces for me the notion the Anu may have more interest in the
form of words than in meaning (but of course, witness the anagram server).
2. there he is, back on the shores of lake erie.
2. there he is, back on the shores of lake erie
OK, tsuwm, I give
wow
the lake erie reference is a YART; there was some discussion recently about exactly where it is from which Anu reigns so gloriously.
[curiously, immensely pleased that she's been around long enough to recognize that particular YART]
discussion recently about exactly where it is from which Anu reigns so gloriously.(Heaving a great West-of-Irelad sigh)
Yes, 'twas I.
I tried extrapolating The Glorious One's home station location from the article in Smithsonian.
Given Anu's note about being on shores of Lake Erie .... seems I was wrong!
(Pouring ashes over head emoticon)
Sooooo -- I give!
Wow
A word with all the vowels in order, which I am yet to find elsewhere....
arteriosus
Maybe this should go under the medical words thread.
Rapport was established superficially.
As in ductus arteriosus? Something from embryology, can't quite place it
In reply to:
As in ductus arteriosus? Something from embryology,
Is it serious?
Gee, I hope it's not fetal!
If my memory is correct, it used to be fatal. When the fetus is tiny, and arterial pressures relatively low, there is a communication between the aorta and the pulmonary artery, called the ductus arteriosus.(I think) Ordinarily it involutes before birth. but if it persists the higher pressure in aorta forces blood through it into pulmonary artery which has lower pressure. My brother's only son died of it because heart surgery to correct it had not been developed at that time. So it was fetal, but could often be fatal fifty years ago. Alex, or Doc_Comfort, correct me if I am wrong.
Anybody interested, just type "patent ductus arteriosus" in Yahoo! search box, and up comes a dandy illustration and information about this.