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What is the shortest two-syllable word you can think of used in English? So far, I have only come up with one word with two letters. The word made its way into English from Greek through Latin, is a proper noun, and is used, I’m sure, in many other languages. Can you think more than one?
What is the longest one-syllable word you can think of used in English? I have come up with one that has seven letters, but I’m sure there are other, longer, one-syllable words. Can you think of any?
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Carpal Tunnel
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The word a as pronounced by a North Carolinian with true North Carolinian accent. Now, some would call that 'a' a diphthong, but I hear two most decidedly distinct syllables, especially when you hear bonafide two-syllable words with the final one clipped off altogether.
aa, a type of lava, is pronounced 'ah ah', according to our tsuwm, so that's a two-syllable word of two letters.
Don't have any time now to consider long one-syllable words, but 'straight' comes to mind right away. And that's 8 letters.
Have fun with this thread!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Strengths has nine letters.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ah, and straights (nominative) has 9, also. But I can't raise ya' one, Faldage!
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Carpal Tunnel
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It raises the question: Can inflected forms be considered different words?
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Pooh-Bah
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The ai is a three toed sloth. The two toed sloth, as a matter of interest, is the unau.
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Carpal Tunnel
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AHD calls ai a one-syllable word.
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Pooh-Bah
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AHD calls ai a one-syllable word.
That's interesting. I'd never thought of pronouncing it that way.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dgeigh,
Please settle a bet. How do you pronounce your screen name? I say Dee-Gayg and Faldage says Jay.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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oooh, that's good, eta.
Reminds me of ghoti
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veteran
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I've always sorta said it /də'gɑjɣ/ in me noggin.
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ghoti
I've always pronounced this as shavian. But, in fact, it's the third person singular present indicative of the Sanskrit verb √ghu 'to skeedaddle'.
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Carpal Tunnel
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now, don't go piscine somebody off...
formerly known as etaoin...
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piscine
One man's mead is another one's poisson. Sorry, my intention was not to anger anybody ...
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 poissonclever angle...
formerly known as etaoin...
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AnnaStrophic,
Faldage is right: "J.", based on Shaw's ghoti idea. Dge from "edge" and -eigh from "sleigh". I forget the linguistic term for it, but instead of spelling it Dgeeigh, I dropped one of the Es and shortened it to Dgeigh.
It has been bothering me though. What is the linguistic term for dropping a duplicated letter in such a context?
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Carpal Tunnel
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It has been bothering me though. As well it should--have you no conscience, man?  I've known the pronunciation for a while now: I had inside info.
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I looked up apocope on the web and found that it is the omission of a letter or syllable at the end of a word. So apocope wouldn’t be quite right. Syncope, which is the omission of letters or syllables from the middle of a word, would be technically correct, but I was thinking about a term that dealt more with vowels and how some vowels were dropped from some words in their journeys from Old English to Middle English and Middle English to Modern English. Unfortunately, I think the term I’m looking for is in the one book I sold back to the book store in college
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Carpal Tunnel
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Jay, thank you for clearing up the Shavian (hi jheem!) pronunciation of your name.
How about "elision," or is that too broad?
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Apocope, syncope. I knew it was one of the -copes.
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I meant to say thanks for the suggestion jheem. It pointed us in the right direction.
“Elision” may indeed be the word I'm trying to remember, AnnaStropic. It certainly seems to fit the criteria. But for some reason it still doesn’t sound quite right.
It may be that I have another word stuck in my head that I also can’t remember. When looking up the word apocope I came across the word aphaeresis, and thought it sounded very close to the word I was trying to remember. But, of course, aphaeresis is not the right word either. I guess that’s what I get for taking a Rhetoric class, a Linguistics class, and a History of the English Language class at the same time – too many terms all at once.
Although I sold the book, I know I still have my notes. I may be able to find them and find the term there.
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When it comes to toes, the ais have it.
TEd
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Tell me something. Do I get credit for aa as being the shortest two-syllable word? It is pronounced 'ah ah', as I mentioned up at the beginning of the thread.
I would like a very pretty blue ribbon, please, with a golden volcano in the center. Thank you very much. If you can throw in some lava that lights up before falling into the blue satin sea of the ribbon, I think that would be a nice touch.
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How about:
Io (pronounced "EE oh" though "EYE oh," is also acceptable) was the daughter of Inachus, a river god.
It is also the name of a moth, and thus not capitalized, so there would be no argument about io's being a proper noun.
TEd
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TEd,
Io is the word of which I was thinking too. In addition to everything you mentioned, it is also one of Jupiter’s moons.
Wordwind,
The challenge was to find more than one. Nevertheless, I think together you and TEd have achieved that goal. Your aa-oozing, blue satin sea, golden volcano ribbon is in the mail. (Allow 6 – 10 weeks for delivery. Prize may be subject to tax.)
TEd, what would you like?
dxb
Since all the pronunciations I’ve found for ai show it to be a one syllable word, I don’t think we can accept it.
Has anyone come up with a one-syllable word with more than nine letters?
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journeyman
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journeyman
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I think the smallest two-syllable word would have to be "lepton"... or maybe "proton". The longest one-syllable word is probably "space".  "It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years." -Tom Lehrer
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