What is the largest one syllable word

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This is a list of candidates for the longest English word of one syllable, i.e. monosyllables with the most letters. A list of 9,123 English monosyllables published in 1957 includes three ten-letter words: scraunched, scroonched, and squirreled.^[1] Guinness World Records lists scraunched and strengthed.^[2] Other sources include words as long or longer. Some candidates are questionable on grounds of spelling, pronunciation, or status as obsolete, nonstandard, proper noun, loanword, or nonce word. Thus, the definition of longest English word with one syllable is somewhat subjective, and there is no single unambiguously correct answer.

List[edit]

Proper names[edit]

Some nine-letter proper names remain monosyllabic when adding a tenth letter and apostrophe to form the possessive:

• Laugharne’s ^[5]
• Scoughall’s ^[14]

Note that both use the ough tetragraph, which can represent a wide variety of sounds in English.

In his short story, «Strychnine in the Soup», P. G. Wodehouse had a character whose surname was «Mapledurham», pronounced «Mum». This is eleven letters, while «Mapledurham’s» is twelve.

It is productive in English to convert a (proper) noun into an eponymous verb or adjective:

• A 2007–08 promotion in France used the slogan «Do you Schweppes?», implying a past tense Schweppesed (11 letters) for the putative verb.^[15]
• Schwartzed (10 letters) has been used to mean «(re)designed in the style of Martha Schwartz»^[16]
• Schwartzed has also been used to mean «crossed swords with Justice Alan R. Schwartz»^[17]
• Schmertzed (10 letters) has been used to mean «received undue largesse from New York City through the intervention of negotiator Eric Schmertz»^[18]

Contrived endings[edit]

In a 1970 article in Word Ways, Ralph G. Beaman converts past participles ending -ed into nouns, allowing regular plurals with -s. He lists five verbs in Webster’s Third International generating 10-letter monosyllables scratcheds, screecheds, scroungeds, squelcheds, stretcheds; from the verb strength in Webster’s Second International he forms the 11-letter strengtheds.^[19]

The past tense ending -ed and the archaic second person singular ending -st can be combined into -edst; for example «In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul» (Psalms 138:3). While this ending is usually pronounced as a separate syllable from the verb stem, it may be abbreviated -‘dst to indicate elision. Attested examples include scratch’dst^[20] and stretch’dst,^[21] each of which has one syllable spelled with ten letters plus apostrophe.

See also[edit]

• Longest word in English

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• askoxford.com: What is the longest one-syllable English word?
• rec-puzzles.org: What words have an exceptional number of letters per syllable?

I’m not entirely sure how to word this, but what is the largest set of one syllable words you can find in which every phonetic sound is the same except the vowel? For example, ‘arc’, ‘orc’, and ‘irk’ are a 3 word set in which each word is pronounced _rk with the _ replaced by ä, ô, and ə, respectively. Vowel combinations and diphthongs are allowed, but not adding more vowels in a different place is not. For example, ‘orca’ does not fit into the above set and neither does ‘park’.

I came up with a set containing at least four or five words, but I’m hoping you all can find more

Words are considered valid if they are contained in the OED. Acronyms do not count.

I realize that I wasn’t quite clear earlier about what constitutes a valid answer. What we’re really looking for here is a set of words whose phonetic spellings are the same except for their phonetic vowel or vowels. So in my earlier example of cute, cut, kite, etc. ‘cute’ should probably be disqualified because it is pronounced ‘kjut’ where j is considered a phonetic consonant according to the OED list of phonetic letters.

Also, words like ‘bird’ are acceptable in the same list as ‘bed’ if you specify that they are being pronounced ‘bəːd’ (the English way) not ‘bərd'(the American way) I wasn’t going to include those, but I changed my mind, sorry @RosieF, you were right.

Homophones only count as one word, so ‘cote’ and ‘coat’ are only one word since they are both pronounced ‘kəʊt’.

If you feel like two words are pronounced differently, but I or someone else disagrees with you, see if you can find two separate phonetic spellings to justify your point.