Alphabetical order.

2nd September 2016

All the vowels in alphabetical order

Abstemious means ‘sparse use’ or ‘moderate intake of food and drink’; facetious means being ‘flippant’. Apart from their interesting meanings, the words have a unique connection between them. Both these words have all the vowels in alphabetical order. Such words are quite rare and form a very short list. Abstentious is another such word. The scientific words in the list, such as arsenious, acheilous, annelidous, fracedinous, etc., are hardly ever used in everyday language. The entire list would comprise about 20 words.

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24th May 2016

Spoonerism or switching letters in speech

Spoonerism is a verbal mistake in which the speaker unintentionally switches the first sounds of two or more words often producing humorous results. The noun ‘spoonerism’ was formed after William Archibald Spooner, a highly respected university don in England. Spooner was known to be very absent-minded and he often transposed the letters of two words accidentally. One example of spoonerism is, ‘weight of rages’ instead of ‘rate of wages’. Other examples include ‘a blushing crow’ (a crushing blow), ‘a well-boiled icicle’ (a well-oiled bicycle) and ‘a lack of pies’ (a pack of lies).

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