Words
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diphthong : a combination of two vowel sounds.
eunoia : is the shortest English word containing all five main vowel graphemes. It comes from the Greek word εύνοια which means well mind or beautiful thinking. It is a rarely used medical term referring to a state of normal mental health.
murmur : a soft-sounded and quiet utterance/talking "under your breath" so it is hard to understand what the person talking is saying
Rarely, pairs of homophones have opposite meanings. A well-known example is raise (to build or rise) and raze (to demolish or push down by force). The antonyms cleave (to split apart) and cleave (to adhere, or stick together) are homographs as well as homophones, as is patronize (to support) and patronize (to act condescendingly toward).
While common in other languages, in English there is perhaps only one adjective, blond, that declines for masculine and feminine: a blond man, a blonde woman. Sometimes the same distinction is applied to brunet (masculine) and brunette (feminine).
The Guinness Book of Records, in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be floccinaucinihilipilification at 29 letters. Defined as the act of estimating (something) as worthless, its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutother/letteryIs the letter Y a vowel or a consonant? Printer Friendly Version
Yes, the letter Y is a vowel or a consonant! In terms of sound, a vowel is 'a speech sound which is produced by comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract, with vibration of the vocal cords but without audible friction...', while a consonant is 'a basic speech sound in which the breath is at least partly obstructed' (definitions from the New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998). The letter Y can be used to represent different sounds in different words, and can therefore fit either definition. In myth or hymn it is clearly a vowel, and also in words such as my, where it stands for a diphthong (a combination of two vowel sounds). On the other hand, in a word like beyond there is an obstacle to the breath which can be heard between two vowels, and the same sound begins words like young and yes. (This consonant sound, like that of the letter W, is sometimes called a 'semivowel' because it is made in a similar way to a vowel, but functions in contrast to vowels when used in words.) Whether the letter Y is a vowel or a consonant is therefore rather an arbitrary decision. The letter is probably more often used as a vowel, but in this role is often interchangeable with the letter I. However, the consonant sound is not consistently represented in English spelling by any other letter, and perhaps for this reason Y tends traditionally to be counted among the consonants.