oh my... you need to define your parameters better with questions like this. do you mean 'common' English word? and what do you mean by 'English'? (a search of even the woefully inadequate AHD reveals at least 17 answers!)
here are five(5) that are pretty common English by most definitions:
tsuwm, you are the only person i've seen use an asterisk to denote bold text without 'closing' the word. at first it thought was a typo, but you do it often. i note that later in your post you type "*right*". i'm curious: is there a difference? where did your style of a single apostrophe originate? the only other form i've seen is to _underline_ the word to be stressed.
Or wild cards, which Merriam Webster on line accepts giving us, among others, muumuu and squush, which latter sounds like a recent addition but dates from 1837.
um, tsuwm... your other permutations of my name have been amusing, if not endearing, but unless there's some alternative association for "666", i really must take umbrage. sheeeeesh!!
Numbers can get bad reputations. A couple Hispanic students took umbrage when a lecturer said that in South America, the number 606 on a sign outside a shop meant that it was a pharmacy. That was the number that Paul Ehrlich gave to salvarsan, the first really effective cure for syphilis. There is an interesting story that goes with that. A woman who had been secretary to Paul Ehrlich wrote a book, in which she said Paul Ehrlich had thought 606 was worthless. But against his will, he had been obliged to give laboratory space to a Japanese graduate student who had managed to infect rabbits with syphilis. Paul Ehrlich, just to make busy work for the Japanese student, set him to testing all the compounds that had been found useless. When the Japanese student found 606 would cure syphilis in rabbits, Paul Erhlich shouted "I knew it all the time!" And made sure the Japanes student got no credit at all.
Oh boy!! Is my face red!! Thank you,twusm, for the additions but nobody got the the one I had in mind, which is a sports term for the rest periods in "common" English(american, Indian or whatever).
Don't be red-faced too long: "the only stupid question is the one we never asked". Now I had thought this was spelled chukkar, but on having LIU find you have given me the lesson of a new variant, so thanks!
The Japanese graduate student in question was a genuine scientific pioneer, wrongfully denied the credit he deserved. And surely you are not hinting that bestiality with a rabbit is possible? A medical missionary to what is now Vietnam warned us not to eat duck over there, as the cooks routinely copulate with the abominable cavity thereof. But he never mentioned rabbits in that connection.(sic, again.)
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to tsuwm!!) I liked the challenge. And I like Helen's too. Any idea about the "uu"s?
