A 6 letter word (english) with no vowels

[deptfordmarmoset]

Dont with an apostrophe. How snobby.

Dont is a really elegant French word that gets around clumsy English formations such as ''of which.''

 

[srw]

Well, if you're going to allow loanwords from languages where w is a vowel then all bets are off.

Apart from a,e,i,o,u,y,w I can't think of any other letter of the standard 26-letter Latin alphabet that is used as a vowel in any language. J can stand as the second element of a diphthong as in Dutch 'dijk' or Swedish 'nej' but not to my knowledge stand as a vowel on its own.

VALE!

In (ironically enough) Latin in classical times, the letter V was pronounced like our W or U, so in some words was effectively a vowel - for instance the word which in modern Latin books would be spelt latinus would have been spelt LATINVS.

You get bilingual Greek-Latin inscriptions in which the V is transliterated as the Greek OY (ou in modern English) - for instance the name VALERIANUS might be rendered as ΟΥΑΛΕΡΙΑΝΟΣ.

Of course the root cause of all this is that the Latin alphabet wasn't 26 letters, it was something like 21 - J, U, W are modern inventions while K and Y were only used in Greek loan-words.

 

[swansonj]

Yes, but what of Ethel and Yogh??

Edit: And, do you get off by stopping people trying to make use of their arts degrees?

May I just reassure you that my prejudices about experts using specialised language to restrict discussion do not discriminate between arts and science degrees.

In fact, a formative experience in this area was person A understanding perfectly well the concept of latent heat of fusion, but not knowing or remembering the term "fusion", and person B, a scientist, choosing not to make the effort to engage in the concept but dismissing person A's contribution for failure to use the term "fusion".

If this seems unlikely on the face of it to constitute a formative experience, I should perhaps add that person A went on to become my wife...

 

[Tim Hall]

All of these answers are predicated on the idea that 'y' is not a vowel in English, a conventional assertion I've never understood. If a letter represents a vowel sound, as 'y' does in all these cases, then it is a vowel. Discuss.

ITYM "Dyscuss". HTH.

 

[robjh]

VALE!

In (ironically enough) Latin in classical times, the letter V was pronounced like our W or U, so in some words was effectively a vowel - for instance the word which in modern Latin books would be spelt latinus would have been spelt LATINVS.

You get bilingual Greek-Latin inscriptions in which the V is transliterated as the Greek OY (ou in modern English) - for instance the name VALERIANUS might be rendered as ΟΥΑΛΕΡΙΑΝΟΣ.

Of course the root cause of all this is that the Latin alphabet wasn't 26 letters, it was something like 21 - J, U, W are modern inventions while K and Y were only used in Greek loan-words.

True enough. I wasn't really taking ancient or mediaeval spellings into account when I wrote that.
I did, at the back of my mind, have a suspicion that somewhere in the world a lesser-known language does indeed use V to indicate a vowel, and after a bit of geeky googling have come up (only) with Creek, which calls itself Mvskoke (English : Muskogee), where V is used for a neutral vowel sound.

I don't suppose there are many Creek loanwords in English to complicate the challenge in this thread.

 

[Fnaar]

Syzygy - an astronomical term for 3 celestial bodies in conjunction .

Miss Goodbody knows about that ... well, she told me that a heavenly body would be "passing close to Uranus"

 

[jefmcg]

Tsktsk

OK, I'm gonna say it.

This did not get enough love (ok, not enough "likes")

It's a perfectly acceptable variant spelling of tsk tsk, without a vowel letter or sound.

 

[srw]

I don't suppose there are many Creek loanwords in English to complicate the challenge in this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_from_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas
Captain Scott took his Pemmican to the muskeg and ate it sitting under the Catalpa.

(Two at least of those words are relatively familiar)

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

OK, I'm gonna say it.

This did not get enough love (ok, not enough "likes")

It's a perfectly acceptable variant spelling of tsk tsk, without a vowel letter or sound.

So tsktsk to all you non-likers!

 

[winjim]

May I just reassure you that my prejudices about experts using specialised language to restrict discussion do not discriminate between arts and science degrees.

In fact, a formative experience in this area was person A understanding perfectly well the concept of latent heat of fusion, but not knowing or remembering the term "fusion", and person B, a scientist, choosing not to make the effort to engage in the concept but dismissing person A's contribution for failure to use the term "fusion".

If this seems unlikely on the face of it to constitute a formative experience, I should perhaps add that person A went on to become my wife...

The first thing you learn in a chemistry degree is organic nomenclature, leading to disillusioned undergrads worrying that they'll never make good chemists because they can't remember the names of the functional groups or whatever. The tutors then have to remind them that nomenclature is not chemistry. I remember one student asking a lecturer how he went about assigning names to all the molecules he was synthesising in his research. The lecturer replied that he just left that bit up to the journal editors...