Here’s one for the Scrabble lovers—eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels. It means “beautiful thinking”, and it’s also the title of a book by Canadian poet Christian Bök, in which each chapter uses only one vowel.
Bök (pronounced book, fittingly enough), said Eunoia “proves that each vowel has its own personality, and demonstrates the flexibility of the English language.” Here is an excerpt for ‘o’, which I particularly enjoy because it’s all about books:
Loops on bold fonts now form lots of words for books. Books form cocoons of comfort – tombs to hold bookworms. Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post-docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth. Dons who work for proctors or provosts do not fob off school to work on crosswords, nor do dons go off to dorm rooms to loll on cots. Dons go crosstown to look for bookshops known to stock lots of top-notch goods: cookbooks, workbooks – room on room of how-to-books for jocks (how to jog, how to box), books on pro sports: golf or polo. Old colophons on schoolbooks from schoolrooms sport two sorts of logo: oblong whorls, rococo scrolls – both on worn morocco.
For a closer look, check out the text or flash versions, or listen to Bök read aloud from the ‘i’ chapter:
