Dale Has Fun With Words

I love games and puzzles dealing with words and language. We were sitting in the studio talking about things that make some words unique and we came up with a bit of a stumper. We came close to the correct answer but came up one letter short. The question: what one syllable word has the most letters?

First, some people might not know what a syllable is. Maybe they weren't paying attention in second grade and they never really caught on, but a syllable is a unit of a word. It creates the cadence of a word and usually is centered on a vowel. Water is two syllables, “wa” and “ter”. Clean is one syllable. There’s no vocal break in the word.

So what’s the longest one-syllable word?

Supposedly there was only one, but there are actually several.

They’re nine letters long and all begin with “s” and end with “d”

Ready?

Screeched, scratched, scrounged, scrunched and stretched. And a bonus one – begins with “s” and ends in “s” – strengths.

How about a word that contains all of the vowels in alphabetical order?

Actually there are more than 30 of those, but the three most common words under those rules are facetious and affectious and abstentious.

And how about this one? Words that are pronounced the same but have none of the same letters.

“You” and “ewe”, “eye” and “I” and “oh” and “eau”. Can you think of any others?