May 5, 2025
This week¡¯s theme
Words with all the vowels
This week¡¯s words
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI
Previous week¡¯s theme
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg
I like people who practice what they preach. But I love words that do.
Take pentasyllabic, a word that both means and is five syllables long.
Talk about walking the syllabic walk. (More )
That got me wondering: Why doesn¡¯t the word
vowel include all the vowels?
Where are a, i, and u hiding? It¡¯s like a party missing half the guests.
Let¡¯s fix it. We make some progress with
vowelize. But that still leaves
it without a and u. How about
vowelization? Now all we need is a u. Where
do we go from here? Maybe u can help? Share on our
or email us at words@... (include your location: city, state). We¡¯re all ears. And eyes. And
sometimes y.
In the meantime, we vow to bring you words this week with all vowels: aeiou,
and yes, even the sometime-shy y.
Some vowely good fun from our archives:
- Shortest word with all five vowels:
- Shortest with all six vowels:
- Words with vowels in order:
see ,
,
and .
- Vowels once and in alphabetical order: see
- All six vowels, any order: see
- Only one vowel (because why not do the opposite): see
elucidatory
PRONUNCIATION:
(i-LOO/LYOO-si-duh-tuh-ree)
MEANING:
adjective: ¿ªÔÆÌåÓý to clarify or explain.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin elucidare (to make clear), from lucid (bright, clear), from
lucere (to shine), from lux (light). Ultimately from the Indo-European
root leuk- (light), which also gave us lunar, lunatic, light, lightning,
lucid, illuminate, illustrate, ,
Lucifer, translucent, lux, and lynx. Earliest documented use: 1774.
NOTES:
Something elucidatory is a flashlight in the fog of confusion.
It¡¯s what a good teacher provides, what a user manual tries to be,
and what this very entry hopes to accomplish.
USAGE:
¡°Fans scrambled to decode and catalogue all this information online,
providing elucidatory footnotes.¡±
Rachel Aroesti; From Baby Reindeer to Taylor Swift, How Amateur
Sleuths Ruined Pop Culture; The Guardian (London, UK); May 25, 2024.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace
turns into a circus. -Turkish Proverb
Or email us at words@...
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