Question: My first-grade daughter recently reported that she had been taught that the vowels are "a," "e," "i," "o," "u" and sometimes "y" and "w." How can "w" be a vowel?Answer: It's true that "w" serves a vowel-like function when it is combined with one of the principal vowel letters (usually "a," "e" or "o"). Even when it is a consonant, the "w" sound (which is often but not always spelled with the letter "w") could perhaps more accurately be called a glide or semivowel. If you say the word "wall," for example, you will notice that you begin with your lips in the position of the vowel of "ooze" and they then move to the position for the following vowel.
There are a few English words in which "w" is the only vowel letter, however. They all come from Welsh, where "w" commonly represents either a vowel or a consonant sound. Examples are "cwm," the name of a particular kind of steep-sided mountain valley, and "crwth," the name of an ancient Celtic stringed instrument. In such words "w" represents the vowel sound of "ooze" or "too."
Question: Why are English muffins called "English muffins"? As far as I know, people in England don't even know what they are.
Answer: Although it's become popular to say "English muffins don't come from England," the statement isn't exactly true. First of all, let's consider the word "muffin." Nowadays we think of a "muffin" as a cupcake-shaped, sweetish confection, but originally the word referred to a flat round yeast cake baked on a griddle -- which happens to be what an English muffin is. Those original muffins were "English" insofar as they were eaten by people in England.
The coining of the term "English muffin" is attributed to Samuel Bath Thomas, himself an Englishman, who relocated to New York City and opened a bakery in 1880. He began producing the previously-unknown-in-America muffins from a family recipe. He is said to have sent his muffins out in the arms of "muffin men" who hawked them on the streets.
Question: One of my work associates claims that the longest word that does not repeat any letter in the word is "ambidextrously." Do you know of a longer one?
Answer: The kind of word you ask about, one in which no letter of the alphabet appears more than once, is called a "nonpattern" word and belongs to a larger group of words called "isograms." Isograms are words with a particular letter pattern, or, as in the case of "ambidextrously," the lack of a pattern.
"Ambidextrously," which contains 14 letters, is certainly one of the longest nonpattern words. We are aware of only one word entered in the Third New International that surpasses the fourteen-letter mark: "dermatoglyphics," a fifteen-letter noun that means "patterns of the specialized skin of the inferior surfaces of the hands and feet" or "the study of such patterns." There could be other nonpattern words that are even longer, but we haven't found them yet.
This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster's "Collegiate Dictionary," Tenth Edition. Send questions to: Merriam-Webster's Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102. Merriam-Webster Inc. Dist. by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service