English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and p ...

typically represents

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

sounds with the five conventional vowel letters , as well as , which may also be a consonant depending on context. However, outside of abbreviations, there are a handful of words in English that do not have vowels, either because the vowel sounds are not written with vowel letters or because the words themselves are pronounced without vowel sounds.

Words without written vowels

There are very few lexical words (that is, not counting interjections) without vowel letters. The longest such lexical word is '' tsktsks'', pronounced . The mathematical expression '' nth'' , as in ''delighted to the nth degree'', is in fairly common usage. Another mathematical term without vowel letters is ''ln'', the natural logarithm. A more obscure example is '' rng'' , derived from ''ring'' by deleting the letter . Vowelless proper names from other languages, such as the surname Ng, may retain their original spelling, even if they are pronounced with vowels. In the

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

period, there were no standard spellings, but was sometimes used to represent either a vowel or a consonant sound in the same way that Modern English does with , particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. This vocalic generally represented ,"Y, n.". OED Online. September 2012. Oxford University Press. 4 October 2012. as in ''wss'' ("use"). However at that time the form was still sometimes used to represent a digraph (see W), not as a separate letter. This practice exists in modern

Welsh orthography Welsh orthography uses 29 letters (including eight digraphs) of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords. The acute accent (), the grave accent (), the circumflex (, , or ) and the diaeresis mark () are al ...

so that words borrowed from

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

may use this way, such as: * The ''

crwth The crwth (, also called a crowd or rote or crotta) is a bowed lyre, a type of stringed instrument, associated particularly with Welsh music, now archaic but once widely played in Europe. Four historical examples have survived and are to be foun ...

'' (pronounced or , also spelled ''cruth'' in English) is a Welsh musical instrument similar to the

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

) :''He intricately rhymes, to the music of crwth and pibgorn.'' in the Welsh alphabet W is a vowel so this word should not be counted. * ''cwtch'' (a hiding place or cubby hole) is also from Welsh (albeit a recent word influenced by English, and used almost exclusively in the variant of English spoken in Wales, not in standard English), and ''crwth'' and ''cwtch'' are the longest English dictionary words without according to

Collins Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. The edition of the dictionary in 1979 with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was ...

. in the Welsh alphabet W is a vowel so this word should not be counted. * A ''cwm'' (pronounced ) is used in English in a technical geographical or mountaineering context to mean a deep hollow in a mountainous area, usually with steep edges on some sides, like a corrie or cirque, such as the

Western Cwm The Western Cwm () is a broad, flat, gently undulating glacial valley basin terminating at the foot of the Lhotse Face of Mount Everest. It was named by George Mallory when he saw it in 1921 as part of the British Reconnaissance Expedition that ...

Mount Everest Mount Everest (; Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation (snow heig ...

. It is also sometimes used, by way of more recent borrowing from Welsh, in a more general sense of a valley. The spellings ''coombe'', ''combe'', ''coomb'', and ''comb'' come from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

''cumb'', which appears either to be a much earlier borrowing from a predecessor of modern Welsh, or to have an even earlier origin, given that there was an ancient Greek word κὑμβη (kumbē) meaning a hollow vessel. In English literature, one can find the spellings ''combe'' (as in

Ilfracombe Ilfracombe ( ) is a seaside resort and civil parish on the North Devon coast, England, with a small harbour surrounded by cliffs. The parish stretches along the coast from the 'Coastguard Cottages' in Hele Bay toward the east and along the ...

and

Castle Combe Castle Combe is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Wiltshire, England. The village is around north-west of Chippenham. A castle once stood in the area, but was demolis ...

), ''coomb'' (as in

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philology, philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was ...

) or ''comb'' (as in

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

). There are also numerous vowelless interjections and

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

found more or less frequently, including ''brr'' (''brrr'' is occasionally accepted), ''bzzt'', ''grrr'', ''hm'', ''hmm'', ''mm'', ''mmm'', ''mhmm'', ''sksksksk'', ''pfft'', ''pht'', ''phpht'', ''psst'', ''sh'', ''shh'', ''zzz''.

Alphabetical list of words without vowels A, E, I, O, U

B Brr Brrr By(s) Byrl(s) Bzzt C Ch Chynd Cly Crwth(s) Cry Crypt(s) Cwm(s) Cyst(s) D Dry(ly)(s) F Fly Flyby Fry Fy Fyrd(s) G Ghyll(s) Glycyl(s) Glyph(s) Grrl Grrr Gyp Gyppy Gyp(s) Gypsy H Hm Hmm Hwyl(s) Hymn(s) Hyp(s) J Jynx K Ky L Lym(s) Lymph(s) Lynch Lyncx M Mhmm Mm Mmm My Myrrh(s) Myth N Nth Ny(s) Nymph(ly)(s) P Pfft Ph(s) Phpht Pht Ply Pry(s) Psst Psych Pygmy Pyx R Rhy Rhythm(s) Rng Rynd(s) S Scry Sh Shh Shrthnd Shy(ly) Sknch Sksksksk Sky Skyr Sly(ly) Spry(ly) Spy Sty Stymy Swy Sylph(s) Syn Sync(s) Synch(s) Synd(s) T Thy Thymy Try Tryp(s) Tryst(s) Tsk(s) Tsktsk(s) Twp Tyg(s) Typp(s) V Vly W Wyn(s) Wynn Why(s) Wry (ly) Wss Wych Wyn Wynd(s) Wynn(s) X Xlnt Xylyl(s) Xyst(s) Y Ympt Z Zzz

Alphabetical list of words without vowels A, E, I, O, U, and Y.

B Brr Brrr Bzzt C Ch Crwth(s) Cwm(s) Cwtch G Grrl Grrr H Hm Hmm M Mhmm Mm Mmm N Nth P Pfft Ph(s) Phpht Pht Psst R Rng S Sh Shh Sknch Sksksksk T Tsk(s) Tsktsk(s) Twp W Wss X Xlnt Z Zzz

Words without vowel sounds

Weak forms of

function word In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...

s may be realized without vowel sounds, as in ''I can go'' and ''I must sell'' . Some of these forms are reflected in orthography as contractions, such as ''s'', ''ll'', ''d'', and ''n't''.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Types of words Vowels Vowel letters Lists of English words

Words without written vowels

Alphabetical list of words without vowels A, E, I, O, U

Alphabetical list of words without vowels A, E, I, O, U, and Y.

Words without vowel sounds

See also

References