abstemious & facetious

For years I have occasionally mentioned at appropriate points in conversation that there are two words in English that have one of each of the vowels in alphabetical order. One of them is "facetious", but I never could remember the second one, which rather spoiled the fun.

Fortunately Miss Cellania came to the rescue today ("English Grammar") with some "Odd English Words", which I quote here complete with the parenthetical observations that I don't really find all that amusing, but there you go:

  • "Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right. (Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)
  • Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable. (I'll bet you're going to check this out.)
  • No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
  • Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt". (Are you doubting this?)
  • The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet. (Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?)
  • The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes). (Yep, I knew you were going to "do" this one.)
  • There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous (You're not doubting this, are you?)
  • There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious." (Yes, admit it, you are going to say …… a e i o u)
  • TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. (All you typists are going to test this out)

For those who object and insist that 'y' is sometimes a vowel, may one suggest considering the adverbial forms?

Posted on January 29, 2008 at 18.49 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Such Language!

2 Responses

Subscribe to comments via RSS

  1. Written by Max West
    on Friday, 9 March 2012 at 22.13
    Permalink

    "Arsenious" has every vowel in order too.

  2. Written by jns
    on Wednesday, 14 March 2012 at 23.51
    Permalink

    Eureka! Okay, some will argue that this is a technical word, as though that makes it not a real English word, but I think it's good to know about and from now on I'll refer to the three such words. Thanks.

Subscribe to comments via RSS

Leave a Reply

To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.

I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.