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I was driving past the village of Hampsthwaite the other day, and happened to spot the six consecutive consonants in the middle. It set me wondering whether this was the most possible, and if not, which word contains the maximum number?

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One could argue (mostly unsuccessfully) that 'syzygy' is nothing but consonants. – oosterwal Mar 16 '11 at 21:43
Many of these words do not actually have that many sonsonant phonemes in a row. th is only one sound, so hampsthwaite only has five consonants in a row. Catchphrase only has four consonant phonemes in a row, and so on. – Peter Olson Jul 9 '11 at 20:14
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It’s kind of stretching things to call “w” a consonant there. After all, “way” is a triphthong. – tchrist May 16 '12 at 0:29

3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Archchronicler, catchphrase, eschscholtzia, latchstring, lengthsman, and postphthisic each have six consonants in a row.

HIRSCHSPRUNG'S (DISEASE) has seven consecutive consonants, as does SCHTSCHUROWSKIA. The shortest such word is TSKTSKS. All of these words can be found in major English dictionaries.

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Why did you fully capitalize the words in the second paragraph? – MrHen Mar 16 '11 at 19:12
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Foreign proper names are probably your safest bet. I always liked Chruschtschov though Khrushchev is the more common transliteration. Wikipedia has a dedicated section that lists a few more:

Twelfthstreet (normally two words but sometimes written as one, as in a song title; Eighthstreet is feasible by analogy), and Hirschsprung, as in Hirschsprung's disease (though this is after a Danish surname). The scientific name of the white (or Tubergen) squill is Scilla mischtschenkoana, and the transliterations of several Russian names, such as Tischtschenko, contain the same constellation of seven consonants.

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up vote 1 down vote

Sorry if this is a tad off-center, but the longest sequence of typographic (as opposed to phonologic) consonants in a single syllable may be five, in the words strengths and lengths. (Strengths may be the one-syllable word with the largest number of [spelled] consonants: 8.)

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BTW, strengths and lengths might also be among the words with the longest sequence of phonologic consonants: 4. Specifically, eng, k, th, s – H Stephen Straight May 15 '12 at 23:59
Twelfths also ends in four consonant sounds: l, f, th, s. So does sixths: k, s, th, s. – tchrist Jan 3 at 10:04

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