Lost Word Of The Day (54)

One of the most astonishing careers was that of Peter Brough who managed to build a career on the radio culminating in the early 1950s hit show, Educating Archie. He was an Engastrimyth, the favoured word for those who prefer to derive from Greek rather than Latin for a ventriloquist. Quite why he was so successful in a medium which relied on sound only is a mystery, but fair play to him.

Engastrimyth and ventriloquist are their exact equivalents in their respective languages, en in Greek meaning in, gaster belly, and muthos speech, while in Latin venter means stomach and loqui to speak. Curiously, ventriloquism contains every letter of the alphabet from Q to V including two of the least commonly used letters, q and v.   

Propinquities and quadruplications each use the same run of eight letters (NOPQRSTU), unsurpassed in the English language unless you brazen-facedly allow the alphabet to loop round, in which case brazen-facedly featuring YZABCDEF would qualify.