File under “Play, Vowel”: English vowels are not only A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y — again.
One of my grade-school teachers once bet our class five dollars that we couldn’t find a word that lacked a vowel. Every English word, we were instructed, must have a vowel— A, E, l, O, U, and sometimes Y, in the classic listing. Now, five bucks was a lot of money at the time, so we mulled and tested and poked at this theory for . .. well, for about ten minutes because recess was coming up and we had a lot of jungle-gymming to do.
I wish I could remember which teacher that was, because, as you can imagine, my jungle-gym mastery has declined considerably over the years and I’ve therefore been able to devote some time to locating some English words that I offer as exhibiting vowelless- ness. I don’t seek to show up my esteemed grade-school teacher; I simply need the five-spot for a gallon of gas.
My first candidate was a word I encountered some years after the challenge. Cwm is a geological term, synonymous with cirque —a hollow ground out by glacial action. Cwm is of Welsh origin, and was in use by the 1850s (which is not when I was in grade school, thank you very much). So, then, A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y and W.
Then I thought about words like grr —an onomatopoeic interjection indicating anger (or better yet, angerrr). Grr is a word by my estimation (and it’s the basis of one of my favorite neologisms: grrl, meaning an angrry woman). And now we stand at A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y, W, and R.
Then, with dreams of my billfold bulging with fivers, I thought to offer acronyms and initialisms. “The description fits you to a T!”
T is a word, and if it has a vowel, it must be the T. Now our list stands at A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y, W, R, and T.
So, have I convinced you that some English words lack vowels? Good. Because now you’re wrong, as I’ll explain in the next entry. You can keep the five.