The longest one-syllable words in the English language

" Never judge us the least."

Yours truly,

"Monosyllable"

- Riya Ravi Sankar

Riva Ravi Sankar was born and raised in Coimbatore, a city in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.  She is a poet and the English language has always fascinated her.


WHAT ARE MONOSYLLABIC WORDS?

A word with one syllable is called a monsyllabic word.  The word "cat" is an example of an monsyllabic word.  Monsyllabic words cannot be divided into two or more syllables.  Each syllable must contain no less than one consonant and one vowel.  The consonant "y" can be a monsyllable.


TRIVIA

* According to the Guinness World Records, the longest monsyllabic words in the English language begin with the letter "S."  "Scraunched" and "scrounded" are the longest and they both have 10 letters.  "Screeched,"" scrounged," ""squelched, "straights"and strengths finish in second place with 9 letters.

* It's interesting to note that in Chinese, all words are monsyllabic.

* How many monosyllabic words are there in the English language?  The Phonetic Word Search website returns 12,000 one-syllable words.  However, some of those words have two pronunciations and many of them are rarely used.


- Joanne