Special Words, Special Meanings Quiz

Answer: Abstemious

There are not many words in the English dictionary which have all the vowels in alphabetical order. Among these words, the most common are abstemious and facetious.

Abstemious is an adjective which means moderate in eating and drinking, non indulgent, or temperate. The word comes from the Latin "ab", which means "off" or "away" and the stem of "temetum", that means "strong drink" and "temulentus", that means "drunken". Etymologically, the word refers only to abstinence from alcohol, but its meaning has been extended to temperance as a way of life.

Answer: Eunoia

Eunoia is six letters long, and the shortest word in the English language which contains all five vowels.

Eunoia means goodwill or well-mindedness. In rhetoric "eunoia" means empathy, or receptivity between the speaker and the audience. This word comes from the Greek "eû" and "nodeos" and it means "goodwill".

Answer: Rhythms

Rhythms is the plural of rhythm. The word, in its plural form, is a countable noun and is considered the longest English word which does not contain any vowels. Rhythm means a regular, repeated pattern of sounds or movements, or a regular, repeated pattern of events or activities.

The word comes from the Latin word "rhythmus", which means "movement in time" and from Greek "rhythmos", which means "measured flow or movement".

Some believe that when the word has no other vowel, the letter Y can be considered as a vowel. This quiz, however, assumes the vowels are a, e, i, o and u.

Answer: Ghost

A ghost is a dead person who is believed to appear or to manifest as a nebulous figure. The word is from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language root *gheis-, used to form words that indicate "excitement" or "fear". In Old English can be "gast", meaning "breath", or "gæstan", meaning "to frighten".

The letters of the word ghost are arranged in alphabetical order. It is estimated that there are less than 900 words in the English language that have their letters arranged in alphabetical order. These words are known as "abecedarian" words.

Answer: Aegilops

The genus name Aegilops originates from the Greek "aegilos", which can mean "a goat" or "goat like".

Aegilops, technically, is a Latin term whose letters are in alphabetical order. It is used to name the genus of plants in the grass family, Poaceae, found in Eurasia and America. They can be called goat grasses, and some species are considered invasive weeds.

Answer: Beefily

Beefily is an adverb derived from the adjective beefy, which means muscular and heavily built, robust, or athletic. The word comes from Latin "bov", meaning "ox", old French "boeuf" and Middle English "beef".

Beefily and billowy are the longest English words, seven letters long, with letters in alphabetical order. They are two examples of abecedarian words.

Answer: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan is a word with 10 letters, one vowel and three syllables. Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked Asian country. Its capital and main city is Bishkek. Although located in a mountainous region, it was not isolated because it was crossed by the Silk Road and other commercial routes.

The word Kyrgyz is believed to be derived from the Turkic word for "forty" (related to the 40 clans of the legendary hero Manas) and "-stan" that means "place of" or "country".

Please remember that this quiz assumes that the vowels are a, e, i, o and u.

Answer: Spoonfeed

Spoonfeed is a nine-letter word with letters arranged in reverse alphabetical order. The word appeared in 1615 in the sense of using a spoon to feed a baby or a sick person. This word is often used to describe providing too much data and information to a person, so that she does not need to think, try to resolve a problem or reason independently.

Answer: Uncopyrightable

The word uncopyrightable means "unable of being copyrighted". This word has its origin in the word copyright that appeared in 1735 as "the right to make or sell copies", from copy and right.

Uncopyrightable is one of the longest English words in which no letter is repeated.

Words or sentences in which each letter appears no more than once are named "heterograms". This word comes from "hetero", meaning "different" and from "gram", which means written. There are doubts about who coined this word. This concept appeared in Dimitri Borgmann's book "Languages on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Odditis", 1965, and in a Borgmann article in which the author used the term "isogram". Since the letters are not repeated, these words are called first-order isograms.

Answer: Caucasus

The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain system which is considered a natural barrier between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, and is the home to Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain peak in Europe.

Caucasus is a Latinized form of Kaukasis, used by the ancient Greeks. Pliny said the word refers to "mountain ice shining white with snow". Alternatively, it may have been derived from the Pelasgian root, "kau", meaning mountain.

"Caucasus", "intestines", "appeases" and "teammate" are examples of "pair-isograms" or "double isogram", words in which each letter appears twice.