The Lex Files

November 1st, 2002

I had a friend email me a question that he thought I would be able to answer quickly.

He was right.


He knew, as many good people do, that “facetious” contains all five vowels in alphabetical order. He wanted to know if other words existed with the same unique quality. I thought about pointing out “facetiously,” but resisted the urge.


Rather, I pointed out the joys of words like “abstemious” and the under-used “bacterious.” I then pointed out several extremely esoteric, unused, and largely unpopular words that also work: abstentious (relating to being absent), acheilous, acheirous, adventitious, aparecious, areious (the shortest), annelidous, arsenious, arterious, atenisodus, caesious, fracedinous, lamelligomphus (the longest), lateriporous, and parecious.


Once I’d churned out that list, I knew that I was done thinking for the day.


Okay, I admit that after the first two, which I knew by memory, I had to go to my old friend Richard Lederer, a famous and entertaining linguist and author of many books about English. But still. I like being the go-to guy for questions like that.