A student asked me a question that I couldn’t immediately answer. In grade school he learned the adage that “the vowels are the letters a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and sometimes w.” He was fine with y, which occurs as the lone vowel in syllables in words such as by, psych, hysteria, and silly. But what about w? Are there any English words in which w is the sole vowel in a syllable? Or does this adage merely refer to the use of w in combination with other vowels, such as in words like growth, flaw, and few?

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Richard Veit
Department of English
University of North Carolina Wilmington