Autumn & Column

[RCP]

Are there any other English words ending with -umn?

[Quizmonster]

I think not, RCP. One website offers 'alumn' and 'ecumn', but these must be either abbreviations - perhaps of 'alumnus/i' and 'ecumenical' - or Americanisms, as neither is supported by the OED.

[RCP]

Thank you QM - It's what I thought but unless I could find a dictionary with all the words written backwards I wasn't too sure how to check.

[Quizmonster]

RCP, Click http://www.onelook.com/

Once there, where it says 'Word or phrase', type in ???umn and click on 'search'. It will offer you 'autumn' and 'column', these being the only words consisting of letter/letter/letter + umn, with the question-marks standing for absent letters. Just add more question-marks - or fewer - to see if there are any such words with 7 letters, 8 letters and so forth. Not exactly a dictionary in reverse, but sort of. I hope that helps in future. Cheers

[KEJ2000]

Hello! This is an American asserting that those are not Americanisms!!! They are simply abbreviations. :-)

[Ewood27]

Umn ....... Can't think of any.

[Quizmonster]

You may well be right, KEJ, but I suspect they're American abbreviations! Certainly, I've never seen either in a lifetime of voracious reading here. Indeed, if you take 'alumnus', this is a word frequently used in the USA - as I understand it - but virtually never in the UK. No-one here ever says: "He's an Oxford alumnus", whereas: "He's a Harvard alumnus" is relatively common in American usage.

I cannot imagine, therefore, where one might find the abbreviation here, given that the word itself is practically unheard of. Cheers

[RCP]

QM - Thanks for the info. (and you're up early with your itallic rebuttals this morning!).

[Quizmonster]

Us oldsters don't need much kip, R!

[David H]

There is such a book RCP, I use it for scrabble. It's Chambers back-words for crosswords. It goes up to 15 letter words and apart from autumn and column, nothing else.

[RCP]

Thanks David, I will look out for that.

[football]

columnination & columnist have the 'umn' but no others with that ending.