FW: [DSNA] Fwd: Two English words with all the vowels (and y) in order

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:46 AM -0500 1/18/03, Frank Abate wrote:
>Jesse sure nailed this, below.  BUT, here is a related quiz for you . . .
>
>Who is the ONLY major league player EVER to have all 5 vowels in his first
>name?
>
>You have thirty seconds . . .
>
>Frank Abate

It took me more than thirty seconds, but relaxing the rules a bit I
can supplement Margaret's correct response (Aurelio Rodriguez, the
good-field no-hit third-sacker of the Tigers et al.) with "Figueroa,
Ed" (it is his first name in the phone book--or Chinese style, as
we've learned from Yao Ming) and then, speaking of ex-Tigers, there's
Mark "the Bird" Fidrych, known in Francophone circles as "Oiseau"
Fidrych.

>
>*******************************************************
>
>On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 10:22:55PM -0600, Luanne von Schneidemesser wrote:
>  > >
>>  >I'm looking for the two words in the English language that have the
>>  >letters "a e i o u y" in the word in order, they can be separated by
>other
>>  >letters.  Can you help?
>[Jesse S.:]
>The two? What makes you think there are only two?
>
>There are a number of words in English with the vowels in order, including
>_abstemious, abstentious, adventitious,_ and _facetious_, along with some
>more obscure ones like _caesious_ (the shortest in English with the five
>main vowels in order) and _parecious_. Most of these can have an _-ly_
>suffix, giving the letters you ask for. Drop _adventitious_ from the list
>if you are bothered by the repeated _i_s, but there are certainly more
>than two.
>

I've usually seen this with the answer "abstemiously" and
"facetiously"; I assume the other adverbs-in-waiting are either not
considered "words" or (in the case of "adventitiously") not
well-formed according to the riddle for the reason Jesse mentions.

larry (upset that he couldn't answer the original query in time
because he had no internet access this weekend)


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