Vowel Dumps

Perhaps this blog won’t be very helpful to anyone with a rating over 1500, but less experienced players often get racks that are clogged with too many vowels and they don’t know how to get rid of them

In order to balance my rack I have played every single one of the words below at one time or another. They are a complete list of all the 4 and 5 letter words that contain 4 vowels. Do you know them all?

EUOI

The only 4 letter word made up only of vowels. It is of Greek origin and is an exclamation of Bacchic frenzy. I think that means you might shout it in a drunken orgy!

There are a lot of 5 letter words. I will give you the ones I can describe in one line first:

AALII A Hawaiian tree. Pluralises with an S

ADIEU Farewell. Both ADIEUS and ADIEUX are plurals

AECIA Plural of AECIUM a fungus. AECIAL is an adjective

AIDOI Plural of a Greek word AIDOS meaning shame or modesty

AINEE An adjective for elder or senior status of a female

AIOLI Garlic mayonnaise. Pluralises with S

AIYEE An interjection of great alarm. No plural

AQUAE A plural of AQUA – water

AREAE A plural of AREA

AUDIO A sound recording. Pluralises with S

AULOI Plural of AULOS, a Greek wind instrument

AURAE Plural of AURA. Takes an L front hook for LAURAE

AUREI Plural of AUREUS, a Roman coin

COOEE A verb meaning to call shrilly. Also COOEY

EERIE Eery – uncanny. Takes F and P hooks for FEERIE / PEERIE

OIDIA Plural of OIDIUM a thin wall fungal spore

OUIJA A board used in a séance. Pluralises with S

QUEUE To line up for service. QUEUED, QUEUES, QUEUING

URAEI Plural of URAEUS. An Egyptian symbol of kingship

Then there are some words that need a longer explanation

AERIE

The nest of a bird of prey. This word has many alternative spellings: AERY, EYRIE, AIERY, AYRIE, and EYRY. They can all be pluralised with IES endings and this version has a lot of hooks. 3 end hooks to make AERIED, AERIER and AERIES. One front hook to make FAERIE

BOOAI

A remote rural place, as in “up the booai”. Also spelled BOOAY and BOOHAI. All of the options can be pluralised with an S

MIAOU

A verb indicating the sound made by a cat. There are a lot of alternative spellings: MEOW, MEOU, MIAOW and MIAUL. Verb extension of –ED and –ING are all normal. MIAOUED is quite cute because it has all 5 different vowels in a consecutive sequence

LOOIE and LOUIE

A lieutenant. Also LOOEY has the same meaning and all 3 words can be pluralised with an S. Both LOOIE and LOOEY take front hooks to make BLOOIE / FLOOIE or BLOOEY / FLOOEY

OORIE and OURIE

Both of these are Scottish words meaning dingy or shabby and they all extend normally as adjectives. So does another word meaning the same thing – OWRIE. The 3 words are also a rich source of front hooks, but they are all different, so be careful. CGT for OORIE - (COORIE, GOORIE and TOORIE). A versatile CLPT for OURIE – (COURIE, LOURIE, POURIE and TOURIE). Just CL for OWRIE – (COWRIE and LOWRIE). The only consistent thing is that they all take C

ZOAEA, ZOOEA and ZOEAE

All three are to do with the larval stages of crabs with the last one being the plural of ZOEA and therefore taking no extensions. The first two can be pluralised with both an E and an S. The E extension is particularly useful as it gives you words with 5 consecutive vowels. ZOOEA also has an adjective form of ZOOEAL

Happy Rack Balancing Patrick