Which is the longest English word without a Vowel?

Answer 1

Summary -- all the answers containing the letter Y are mistaken, because Y acts as a vowel in those words.

My suggestion: TSKTSKS

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Here's the explanation

FIRST, what IS a vowel?

bostonianinmo is correct - in words like "sky" the "y" IS a vowel. The very fact that "bi-" and "by" rhyme, or that you sometimes find "rimed" instead of "rhymed" is evidence of this.

The idea that ONLY a,e,i,o and u (or even "sometimes y") are vowels in based on oversimplified definition they gave us in grade school. In fact, a vowel is, before all else, a type of SOUND rather than a type of LETTER. We call specific letters "vowels" because these letters are the ones TYPICALLY used to indicate the vowel sounds.
(compare http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxword00.html)

Remember that SPEECH has the primacy and that a word is, first of all a SPOKEN thing. Writing systems were created as a means to make a record of speech.

Note that the three sounds indicated by the letters "h" "w" and "y" are all weak "semi-vowels" which can easily become vowels or even disappear (as "h" at the end of a syllable). The basic rule is that, whenever "y" or "w" BEGIN a syllable they mark consonants; at the middle of end of a syllable they mark VOWELS. (In the case of "w", except for words from the Welsh, like "cwm" [pronounced "coom"!] w is only used for vowels in diphthongs, e.g., "How now brown cow?" It's even easier to see that they are functioning vowels if you note that final "oy" is pronounced exactly like the "oi" in the middle of a word, and "ow" is pronounced like "ou".)

(Of course, one of my favorite words in all this is "why", made up ONLY of semi-vowels.)

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There ARE words without vowel SOUNDS (and in which none of the letters indicates a vowel). They are various "interjections", such as the following:

brr(r)
grr(r)
tsk
shh(h)
psst
hmm
mm-hmm

This last one might be the longest all by itself. (It is true we might add extra letters to many such words, e.g., h's to "shh" or r's to "brr". But that would be cheating. And where would you stop?!)

I think the longest bona fide word of this sort is "tsktsks" used as a verb, the equivalent of "utters a tsktsk" or "expresses disapproval", e.g., "he tsktsks her suggestions".

for word trivia involving vowels, see:
http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words6.html

(note this is part of a 19-page series on word trivia!)


ANOTHER ANSWER !

For an entertaining list of many consonant-only words (mostly made up) which have actually appeared in literature check out
The Dictionary of Consonant-Only Words by Craig Conly -http://www.oneletterwords.com/consonant/index.html.
(He lists 105 words under "T" alone! )

Answer 2

Rhythm is the longest English word without a vowel.

Answer 3

In a standard dictionary one finds
RHYTHMS
and
NYMPHLY.
I once worked a crossword puzzle with a
theme of words without vowels and
those were the 2 longest entries.

Answer 4

i know a 21 lettered word the alphabet minus the vowels abcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz genuis

Answer 5

"It turns out that "twyndyllyng" (singular) is a 15th century spelling of the word "twinling," which means, in modern English, "twin."

I always thought it was the word, "Rhythms."

Answer 6

Rythym

Answer 7

The

Answer 8

TWYNDYLLYNGS