euouae is a word?! (in English)

[Vincent]

At a mate's house last night we were playing Scrabble on the PS2 and the PS2 played this word.

So far all I've found out is this:

Euouae - according to Chambers Dictionary it is a name for a Gregorian cadence, obtained from seculorum

I can't find it in any dictionaries, real books or online.

Another friend who studies languages (and has been for about 15 years) thinks it could be from Latin, possibly pronounced:

ee-yoo-ay (ay as in "hay")

Possible plural:  euouii
Pronounced: ee-yoo-eye

So, my point in posting this...

Has anyone ever heard of this word before?
Does anyone have anymore info on this word?
How the hell do you pronounce it?
What variations are there?
What are all the tenses of the word (i.e. adjectives, verbs that kind of thing)?

[Vincent]

whabang wrote:
It is an english word. So is flockynockynihilipilification.

Definition: worthless ;-)

That's one of the most stupid words in the English language (except for "stupid" of course ;-) ), it's trying to be too fancy for it's own good.

[Vincent]

Cyberus wrote:
Hmm, sounds like it could be a word that represents a sound.
As in Doh, Fah, etc used to practise musical scales, which are all valid Scrabble words (I lurve Scrabble!).

That's what we originally thought.

If it isn't in the OED, or one of the other big ones, e.g Merriam-Webster, then I would start to doubt its legitimacy as a recongized word.

The only place I've seen it is from links found through Google (one of which you've now got bookmarked ;-) )  Unfortunately the only dictionary we've got here is a Collins one.

Is anyone here at university? When I was at uni, I know we had access to the Oxford English Dictionary online. Perhaps someone can try to look it up. The word's not in my COD.

I never knew that, I must ask Siouxsie to check that out on Monday :-)

I've seen some dubious words used in wordgames, but none as dubious as Euouae!

For a start, aside from some made up imitative words (Anyone read Commando comics, where all the Japanese soldiers say "Aiiieee!" when they attack?), dipthongs of more than 3 letters do not exist in English AFAIK.

Good point.  I'll have to do more searching on dipthongs to see if that gets us anywhere.

As to the Latin connection, I don't recall *ever* encountering it in the ten years I studied Latin. However, in Latin, u can be used as a consonant sound (pronounced like w in English), so it *may* be 'ew-ow-ae'

BUT if the u is meant to be a vowel u, there are only meant to be 5 dipthongs in Latin - ae,au,oe,eu,ui, and certainly no three letter dipthongs.

My mate came to that conclusion last night.  It looked to him like it was made up of the Latin dipthongs, but it wasn't until later that he realised he'd never came acroos an "ou" before.

So this kind of brings us back to square one again, with no answers in sight.  But, at least we know it's not Latin

Puzzling....

Indeed :-)

[Vincent]

Ok, here's a little more.

The plural is:

euouaes

That's according the the Official Scrabble Words book (4th Edition).  Still haven't found it in any real dictionaries yet.

It's a religious Gregorian chant which means it's from the time of Pope Gregory (the git who changed the year calendar ;-) )

That would give us an indication of the language being Latin, but as we've seen, it's not that.  Dave (the language guy) is almost certain that it's not Italian, but it could be from a Yugoslav church language (should find out if he can find the notes for that language again).  But it could actually be from Anglo-Saxon, which basically means it's descended from Scandinavia, as it's definitely not a British word.


Boy this is turning into quite some detective story!

[Vincent]

Cyberus wrote:

Vincent wrote:

That would give us an indication of the language being Latin, but as we've seen, it's not that.

Unless, just an idea only, its ecclesiastical/mediaeval Latin....(?)

In any case, that's really low of the PS2 to use that word! :lol:

:roflmao:

It's actually much easier than that.  Here's what we've found out:

"EUOUAE

The vowels from the words 'Seculorum amen,' the final words of the doxology {Christian hymn, verse or form of words glorifying God}.  The abbreviation is typically supplied with musical cues to show the singer how to link the end of the psalm tone and/or doxology (which use the same recitational melody) to the beginning of the antiphon {short passage (usually from the Bible) recited or sung} in the introit {short prayer said or sung as celebrant is entering Mass or Holy Communion service}"

Or, put simply it's a religious musical abbreviation!

Case closed I think :-)

Oh, and it was really low of the PS2 to use that word anyways, I didn't know you could play abbreviations in Scrabble.  Next time I play it I'll try "fo" or "fubar" and see if it accepts them :-P