Three-letter vowel-less English word
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Three-letter vowel-less word describes a word in the English language which contains three letters, none of which is generally recognized as a symbol representing a vowel. These words will usually contain voiced vowels that are represented or implied by the consonant letters.
Examples:
- cwm -- A steep bowl-shaped hollow on a hill or mountain, for example the Western Cwm on Mount Everest. (This is a Welsh word sometimes found as a loanword; more usually, it has been adapted and spelled in a more usual English manner as comb or combe. It should be noted that w is a vowel in Welsh.)
- nth -- Relating to an unspecified ordinal number: ten to the nth power. Highest; utmost: delighted to the nth degree. Pronounced "enth".
Several onomatopoeic words also fit into this category, such as brr, grr, hmm, pht, pst, shh, and tsk, although whether these count as true "words" may be disputed.
Many English words have the letter Y as their only vowel; three-letter words of this nature include cry, dry, fly, fry, gym, gyp, ply, pry, shy, sky, sly, spy, sty, thy, try, why, and wry. The letter Y is regarded grammatically as a vowel-consonant, but many people who speak English regard it as a consonant only. Longer such words also exist, such as crypt, cyst, dryly, flyby, glycyl, glyph, Gypsy, hymn, jynx, lymph, lynx, myrrh, myth, nymph, psych, pygmy, rhythm, shyly, slyly, spry, spryly, Styx, sync, synth, syzygy, tryst, wryly, and xylyl. The longest English word that does not contain any of the five traditional vowels is probably the eight-letter symphysy, which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means "Union or fusion of two bodies or parts of a body".
An example of a five-letter vowel-less English word:
- crwth -- A stringed instrument.
Both Welsh and English-speaking linguists consider the "w" in cwm and crwth as a vowel. In both words it makes the "oo" sound, as in the word loose.