"Five-Letter" Words

Abracadabra!

I’ve cited Darryl Francis and Dmitri Borgmann a lot as I’ve moved through the early Word Ways, but #3.4 shows the two starting to work together more often. Among its features was Francis’ sequel to Borgmann’s “Multiple-Letter Word Hunt.” At Borgmann’s instigation, Francis found the shortest words he could containing five of each letter in the alphabet except J, Q, and V:

ABRACADABRA, HUBBLE-BUBBLE, CIRCUMCRESCENCE, FUDDY-DUDDY, TELEMETERED, FLUFFY-RUFFLE, WIGGLE-WAGGLING, TSCHISCHLKHATHKHOAN, ILLIMITABIL­ITY, KVIKKJOKK, LILLY-PILLY, NIMBO-MAMMATOCUMULUS, NONINTERVENTION. ORONOOKO, PEPPER- UPPER, TERROR­-STIRRING, ASSESSES, TOTIPOTENTIALITY, UBURU-UKU, M'DAYWAWKAWNTWAWNS, EX-MAXIXE-EXECUTRIX, GRYFFYGRYFFYGRYFFS, ZZZZZ.

Naturally, I thought I’d give it a go. I ended up with…

Abracadabra, hubble-bubble, catch-as-catch-can, fuddy-duddy, beekeeper, fluffy-ruffle, frog-gigging, high-churchmanship, invisibility, knock-knock-joking, lilly-pilly, mammogrammatically, non-Newtonian, door-to-door, pepper-upper, horror-thriller, assesses, tutti-frutti, untumultuous, bow-chicka-wow-wow, polysymbrachydactyly.

That’s two letters less than the prior version—no X or Z. Darryl included “Zzzzz” on the basis of it being a Los Angeles wake-up service, but that one’s been out of business too many years for me to include it on that basis. And I didn’t want to open up the doors to extended sound effects, because then you’ve got aaaaa!, aaaaah, eeeee!, mooooo, pffffft, and on and on.

Ex-maxixe-executrix (former dancer of a specific dance, the maxixe) is a cute construction, one of Borgmann’s suggestions, and I considered borrowing it. But I never would’ve come up with it on my own, so that didn’t feel honest. The same goes for a few other entries on Darryl’s list.

I did consider using zizzer-zazzer-zuzz, a Dr. Seuss creation with nine z’s in its name, and there were a few other examples that had six of one letter that seemed smoother than the corresponding fives. But that seemed to bend the spirit of the “five letters” exercise too far. When most people say there are five donuts, they don’t mean there are five and then some more.

I did get a little liberal with the hyphenation: frog-gigging, high-churchmanship, knock-knock-joking. But those are all based on well-established phrases, although “high churchman” is kind of an outdated position.

I had high hopes that I’d be able to get one of the three letters Darryl didn’t get, but no dice. I did discover the semifamous names Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov and Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, though.

There were a few words I bypassed, like “Aashaadha,” the fourth month in the Hindu calendar. A decent pick if there were no other options, but it’s a variant spelling and not nearly as familiar as “abracadabra.” A similar line of thinking pulled me away from Oroonoko, one of Darryl’s examples that I did find with my own methods. It’s an important novel named after its main character, but I was interested in working without proper names—and if there was a word that was still almost as short and far more familiar like door-to-door, that seemed like the better choice.

Not that this kept me from a few obscure-ish words when there were no better options! I like the understatement of untumultuous, it feels like saying “eh, it’s not a disaster.” And polysymbrachydactyly is a condition meaning “six (or seven) webbed fingers.”

My favorite discovery, though, has to be bow-chicka-wow-wow, a term that suggests sexual activity (loosely based on the music from old porn movies). Sure, I could’ve used bow-wow-wow, but that extension isn’t seen as natural.

Next: Biblical acrostics!