AIEEE!

Readin' some twitter tweets t'other day and came across one by Ryan North, the mind behind the outstandingly excellent Dinosaur Comics.

In this case of this tweet he was relaying a quote from a web page that'd caught his interest. And what caught MY interest was that the quote involved the word "dieing" used in the sense of "if you're not living you're dieing."

Up went my verbal antennae. I was pretty sure that that was not correctamundo. Far as I knew, the only spelling for that word would be "dying." So, full stop and look it up.

Well, seems like I was right. But, as is so often the case, the process of verifying one word brings up another. Because there IS a word "dieing." Dies are what you use when stamping metal and the process of using one is – wait for it – dieing.

Vaguely interesting perhaps. However the main point of this post is what's inside the word. Three vowels in a row. Just like an Oreo – soft creamy vowel center with crispy consonants at the ends. And the thought occurred – how common is that? There are a LOT of double vowels bookended by consonants. But triple seems pretty rare. So that's my question to you. Got any more for me? And, dare I suggest it? Any quadruples?

- And that's today's word from the bird