here’s an oldie, but a goodie… what common english word contains all the vowels (including ‘y’) in order (non-consecutively, of course) from left to right. Each vowel appears only once?
And… what’s the shortest English word that contains the letters “a,b,c,d,e,f”?
“what common english word contains all the vowels (including ‘y’) in order (non-consecutively, of course) from left to right. Each vowel appears only once?”
Well, “abstemiously” fills the bill, but I don’t know how common it is. It means sparingly or modestly.
Webster’s second has “subbookkeeper”, unhyphenated. Webster’s third doesn’t.
Incidentally, I did a search on Google to check whether it was a real word or not… and the last page it found (it only found sixteen) seems very weird…
A queen bee!
This thing devours all birds, beasts, trees, flowers
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stones to meal,
Slays kings, ruins towns,
And beats high mountains down.
-JRR Tolkien
This one is the first letters of the numbers starting with:
One, Two, Three, etc.
Silence, of course.
Still puzzling over Baraqiyal’s last one…
Hmmm…all the ones I can think of are from The Hobbit too, Rasa. Or the Riddle of the Sphinx. Call me a sucker for the classics. Or unimaginative, I suppose.