I have a minor fascination with words that contain all five vowels, once and only once. For some reason they seem to jump out at me wherever I see them. At first you might think they'd be pretty rare, but I've collected hundreds of the things, and many are words in everyday usage, such as "discourage" or "authorize". There are some notable ones; "facetious" and "abstemious" are well-known for having all the vowels in the right order; "education", "auctioned" and "cautioned" are all anagrams of each other. "Behaviour", "favourite" and "dialogue" are interesting because none of them work in American spelling!
I used to think the shortest was "sequoia" (the giant Californian redwood tree), but recently I came across a word "eunoia" meaning "beautiful thinking" - also the title of
this rather curious book, although that's a topic in itself! The longest I could come up with was "psychosexuality", although that's arguably a bit of a cheat with its two y's.
Some of the words are delightfully obscure. For instance, in the British Parliament there is something called the "Outlawries Bill" which is read at the beginning of each new session after the Queen's Speech, in order to assert the right of Parliament to debate a topic of its own choosing. It never proceeds, and it's entirely symbolic. "Outlawries" refers to the practice of making someone an outlaw, as you might guess.
I tried to come up with a name that was an example of the type - my best shot was "vowelarium" (after "planetarium"), but I'm sure people here can do better. Any thoughts?
Anyway, if you have any favourite examples of this type, please share them here!
