''Euouae'' ( ; sometimes spelled ''Evovae'') is an

abbreviation An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...

used as a musical

mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

in Latin

psalter A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters were ...

s and other

liturgical books of the Roman Rite Within the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, a variety of liturgical books have been officially approved to contain the words to be recited and the actions to be performed in the celebration of Catholic liturgy. The Roman Rite of the Latin Churc ...

. It stands for the syllables of the Latin words , taken from the

Gloria Patri The ''Gloria Patri'', also known in English as the Glory Be to the Father or, colloquially, the Glory Be, is a doxology, a short hymn of praise to God in various Christian liturgies. It is also referred to as the Minor Doxology ''(Doxologia Mino ...

, a Christian

doxology A doxology (Ancient Greek: ''doxologia'', from , ''doxa'' 'glory' and -, -''logia'' 'saying') is a short hymn of praises to God in various forms of Christian worship, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns. The tradition derives ...

that concludes with the phrase . The mnemonic is used to notate the variable melodic endings () of

psalm tone In chant, a reciting tone (also called a recitation tone) can refer to either a repeated musical pitch or to the entire melodic formula for which that pitch is a structural note. In Gregorian chant, the first is also called tenor, dominant or tu ...

s in

Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainsong, plainchant, a form of monophony, monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek language, Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed main ...

. In some cases, the letters of ''Euouae'' may be further abbreviated to ''E—E''. A few books of English chant (notably Burgess and Palmer's ''The Plainchant Gradual'') make use of ''oioueae'' for the equivalent English phrase, "world without end. Amen". According to ''

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, list ...

'', ''Euouae'' is the longest word in the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

consisting only of

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s, and also the English word with the most consecutive vowels. As a mnemonic originating from Latin, it is unclear that it should count as an English word; however, it is found in the unabridged ''

Collins English Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. It was first published in 1979. Corpus The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is ...

''. Its all-vowel composition makes it an effective play for certain kinds of vowel-heavy ''

Scrabble ''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a Board game, game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, re ...

'' racks, and the plural form ("euouaes") means a bingo can be made in certain situations. Both the singular and plural forms of the word are contained within the official Collins Scrabble Words dictionary and various other acceptable competition dictionaries. A similar abbreviation, ''Aevia'' (or ''Aeuia''), was used to abbreviate the word in medieval

Office An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a po ...

books. In Venetian and other Italian Office books of the 16th century, an equivalent abbreviation, ''Hal'a'', or ''Hal'ah'', can be substituted for ''Aevia''.

References

* Apel, Willi: ''Gregorian Chant''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. . * Dyer, Joseph: «Roman Catholic Church Music» en
Grove Music Online
'' ed. L. Macy. * Hiley, David: «Chant» in ''Performance Practice: Music before 1600'', eds. Howard Mayer Brown & Stanley Sadie. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990, pp. 37–54. * Hiley, David: ''Western Plainchant: A Handbook''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. . * Levy, Kenneth: «Plainchant» in
Grove Music Online
'' ed. L. Macy.

External links

* {{Wiktionary-inline Medieval music theory Music mnemonics