Wikipedia and Scrabble

As I was looking for the word (used in the August 8 blog) for two consonant sounds (a consonant cluster) in succession, I encountered an interesting Wikipedia listing. If you want to read the entire listing, it is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_with_uncommon_properties.

The listing is a range of various discussions on (as it says) English words with uncommon properties. As I read the listing I realized that this is a good source of information for several of my coworkers who have become engaged in the Iphone app Scrabble.

For instance, if you find yourself with nothing but vowels, the word you want to remember is euouae. It is a type of cadence in mediaeval music and one of the longest words made up completely of vowels. Maybe you have a bunch of vowels and can play off a q. You want to remember the only common word in the English language that has five vowels in a row: queueing.

Speaking of vowels in a row, “there are many words that feature all five regular vowels occurring only once in alphabetical order, the most common being abstemious and facetious.” (I mentioned this recently to a coworker, but at the time I thought they were the only words of their kind; I made them into adverbs - abstemiously and facetiously - to include the y.) “Two of the shortest, at eight letters, are caesious and anemious (OED); and aerious (OED) has only seven letters. Some others are abstentious, acheilous, arsenious, arterious, tragedious, fracedinous, and Gadsprecious (all in OED). Considering y as a vowel, the suffix -ly can be added to a number of these words; thus the shortest word containing six unique vowels in alphabetical order is aeriously, meaning ‘airily’, with nine letters (OED); the much more common facetiously has eleven letters.“

These don’t help much with Scrabble, nor are you likely to use them in common conversation, but there are actually people who get into this kind of research. As long as we’re on the subject, however, here’s more from the Wiki listing:
“Subcontinental, uncomplimentary and unnoticeably are common words having the five vowels once only in reverse order. One of the shortest such words, at eight letters, is Muroidea, a superfamily of rodents.”

There are words that use all the vowels and are shorter, but they’re not in order. “The shortest words with all six vowels (including y) are oxygeusia (an abnormally acute sense of taste), Oxyuridae (a family of parasitic nematodes), Oxyurinae (a sub-family of ducks), and aeriously, with nine letters.”
So, what if you’re playing Scrabble and you have all consonants and there are no vowels open on the board? “Rhythms is the longest common word containing only y as a vowel. Gypsyfy, gypsyry, symphysy, nymphly, and nymphfly are as long or longer, but are not as common.”

I’m not sure how much this blog will help with Scrabble play, but when you think I’m the only one who finds obscure words remember the Wikipedia listing and realize I’ve got a long way to go. At least my words are useful for something other than Scrabble…