English Lesson of the Day

I used to keep a "word of the day" list and fill out a word every day on the whiteboard on my office door - back in the good old days of not having any real responsibility.

Alas, those days are long gone (as I write this, I'm supposed to be doing table assignments for a big dinner). But I still like to keep tabs, as it were, on the English language.

For instance, only a few words use the vowels (a,e,i,o,u, and occasionally y) in order. "Facetiously" is one such word, and another is "abstemiously." One, of course, means "sarcastic or jokingly," and the other means "sparingly."

Another interesting factoid is that an usher does not "ush." You have never been "ushed" to your seats at the theatre, for example.

And, finally, while the word root "structive" means "building upon," it is not by itself a word. Neither, for the record, is "gruntled."