Four Vowels, No Waiting

Whaaaa--?

Word Ways #7.3 includes “Vowel Tetragrams,” a Darryl Francis jam dedicated to finding four-letter strings of “pure” vowels (no Y’s allowed).

A complete list covering every possibility is out of the question, but naturally, I thought I’d see what interesting words appeared today that weren’t on Francis’ radar. Sometimes I used combos he used when the terms he found had slid out of use or had more than four vowels in a row. I’m a little choosier than Francis in one way: I was only interested in four-vowel chains here—five-vowel stuff like Aeaea and queueing didn’t do it for me.

Braaied and braaiing refer to a South African tradition similar to the American barbecue.

The Graeae are three “gray sisters” who advise Perseus about Medusa. They shared one eye and one tooth between the three of them.

Palaeeudyptes was the largest penguin ever. Scarabaeoids are big beetles.

Maieutic is more or less a synonym for “Socratic,” a word I would have bet had no synonyms.

Caiuajara is a dinosaur discovered eleven years ago.

AFAIUI signifies “as far as I understand it.” I avoided most initialisms, but that one was cute.

Laueite is not one of the famous minerals, but it’s named for someone who helped us understand all minerals—Max von Laue, the first to verify that minerals had a regular atomic arrangement.

Plateaued is a common word today, but usage of the word beauetry plateaued some time ago.

Pompeiian stuff is pretty familiar to modern archeologists. Thanks, Vesuvius!

Neoauthoritarianism and neoeugenics are sad fears of modern dystopian thinking—sometimes written with hyphens after neo-, but not always. The stereoautograph was an early twentieth-century invention.

I’m skipping over most words that are always hyphenated, like pie-eating as in pie-eating contest and three-eighths. Likewise most apostrophed words like sou’easter and Xiao'erjing, though the latter has an interesting history. I didn’t even know there were three different Islamic minorities in China with official recognition as such.

Bioaeration is a useful soil treatment. Bioaugmentation is a useful water treatment, even though it sounds like cyborg stuff.

If you’re using the word cardioaortic, you are probably a heart doctor or need to see one.

Glacioeustacy is—well—the rise in sea levels due to polar ice cap melting. You won’t see that in crosswords despite that great IOEU pile-up. Bit of a downer.

Gioioso means joyfully in Italian, and it’s a musical direction I think we should see more of.

Francis’ list has Siouan, but not Niuean. The 2,000 or so residents of Niue demand representation!

Pronoia is the belief that the world isn’t out to get you, but is out to help you. Arguably more dangerous even than paranoia. The plural is pronoiae.

Adelphopoiesis or adelphopoiia was a custom in the Eastern church to unite two men, but don’t get too excited, it was more of a symbolic brother-making or church-recognized close friendship than proto-gay marriage. Or at least that’s what they told everyone. [Knowing clicking noises.]

Calvin and Hobbes fans may remember the children’s story Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie, but the sequel involved an even gooier kablooie.

George Rouault is a famous enough painter that I’ve sometimes seen work called Rouaultian. See below.

Rime couée is what we tend to call end rhyme. Couéism, though, is the psychotherapeutic approach taken by Émile Coué, involving optimistic autosuggestion.

Joueur is a word for “player” used mainly in French, but occasionally in English as “one who takes a playful approach to life itself.”

I’m leaving off some variant forms like zaouia for zawiya, a Muslim place of learning that could be a community, school, or mosque. But I like that one, plus louie as a variant of looey, both short for lieutenant.

If you’re a certain kind of word nerd, then I hope this list leaves you squeeing with excitement.

Next: Word puzzles, the early American history! (With a nod of thanks to Will Shortz, whose early work supplied most of the research.)