Please only dictionary approved words and pronunciation. No abbreviations or acronyms or proper names. In general, these are called "grammagrams". There are several lists available online, including this one and this questionable one.
Anti-obesity - as in anti-obesity medication. EDIT: Any reason for the downvote? Both words are on Merriam-Webster and match the pronunciation of the letters as long as you say it a little quickly. Chris Cole's "Taxonomy of Wordplay" lists. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. A word pronounced like letters Ask Question. Asked 3 years, 11 months ago. Active 3 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 12k times. Or Ziti which sounds like ZT. Two letters pronounced. Entity : N T T I am looking for a word that when pronounced, uses at least 4 separate letters.
I only have a 4 letter solution Please only dictionary approved words and pronunciation. Improve this question. Mellow 1 1 gold badge 7 7 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges.
K is also heard in foreign borrowings, such as the French marquis and Latin machination , which can be pronounced in English with the ch representing the k sound or a sh sound the latter being influenced by French-derived machine. L likes the limelight. It's often spotted with another l bill or with a vowel sample , label , pupil , sabal. Like b , it is unseen but audible in w. Speaking of which, we're getting closer. M prefers to be with the silent types—a behavior we applaud—like b in numb and n in autumn.
It also remembers to pay a visit to grandpa , which is sometimes pronounced in colloquial and dialectal English as "grampa. Although n follows k , g and p , it is the auditory leader in words like know , gnat , and pneumonia. It also makes its presence known in okay, stomps all over comptroller. That word is an alteration of Middle English countreroller , meaning " controller ," and its spelling was influenced by French compte , meaning "an account" as in a bank account.
Long o as in host is social. It frequently pairs with a , e , u , w , -ugh and other o s: oar , note , soul , low , though , and floor are some get-togethers. Short o is obvious in words like hot ; sometimes, however, it dresses up as a and walks around in words like father , fraud , law , talk , and daughter. In addition, there are a few French borrowings with the long o sound without the letter o , such as beau , bureau , nouveau , and haute.
P puts a stop to hiccup —unless you use the variant hiccough. Both spellings are equally valid; however, hiccup , which goes back to the late 16th century, has been in use longer than hiccough. Like many words in English, hiccup is onomatopoeic , having been created through imitation of the sound we make when we hiccup. By the early 17th century, hiccough makes its appearance. According to one source, "The spelling 'hiccough,' popular with the Victorians, is an example of folk etymology circulated by misguided philologists who thought the word derived from 'cough.
The letter q is pronounced the same as the word cue which itself is also a name for the letter. The letter and the word have a history. In Middle English, the word cu referred to half a farthing, and that term ultimately traces to the letter q as an abbreviation for Latin quandrans , denoting the quarter value of a coin.
Additionally, cue , referring to a signal, is believed to be from the abbreviation qu for the Latin word quando , meaning "when" and used as a direction in an actor's copy of a play.
Q has a voice role in cu words like cube , cumulate , cuneiform , and cute. R works openly with w , h , and e in words like write , rhino , and there.
However, it secretly hides in colonel. English borrowed the word from French coronel , and originally it was pronounced with an r sound. The French word is derived from Italian colonnello , and when the French borrowed it, they found it difficult to pronounce.
In an effort to ease the pronunciation problem, they changed the first l sound to an r sound. This is quite a common occurrence; when there are two l sounds or two r sounds near each other in a word, one of them is frequently omitted or changed to a different sound to eliminate a tricky pronunciation. Linguists call this type of alteration dissimilation. When English later adopted the word, the French pronunciation was kept, but the letter r was changed back to an l , making the term look more like the original Italian word and producing the never-ending conflict we continue to have between spelling and pronunciation.
Generally, when the letter c is followed by i , e , or y , it makes an s sound—for example, city , citation , cent , and icy. Long e is the exception e. There is also the unique sound picture ce , as in voice , in which c is seen but s is heard.
As you can see there are more than just a few letters in English that sound exactly like words in English, but what about the picture above that inspired this whole post, what dose it mean? Well I gave you a small hint when I told you I saw it when I was out hiking. This is a trail marker in which someone tried to be funny by writing our the acronym for the name of the trail, not with letters, but with words that sound like letters.
Photo by Gabriele. Tags: English letters and words , ESL , letters that sound like words. Keep learning English with us!
Try it Free Find it at your Library. Share this: Share. About the Author: Gabriele Hi there! Debby Wapner: Is there a name for these letters that are also words?
0コメント