Okay, so I had to try that and — sure, enough — Google gives the answer: BOOKKEEPER. I was planning to "surprise" you with BOOKKEEPING (a second word), but I discovered I had overlooked the fact that the word BOOKKEEPER has a plural: BOOKKEEPERS. Well, of course! So that's three English words that have three pairs of consecutive letters. I also discovered this comment (edited slightly):
If you want to get a little esoteric (and a little disputed), you can go one pair better than that! SUBBOOKKEEPER is the only word found in an English language dictionary with four pairs of double letters in a row. This word is in W2, but is not in W3 or OED2 (link http://www.definition-of.com/subbookkeeper).
I was also able to find the word SUBBOOKKEEPER in several places online: (1) https://www.definition-of.com/subbookkeeper (2) "One of Martin Gardner's books mentions the bookkeeper's assistant or subbookkeeper." But another person said, "Does the assistant to the bookkeeper engage in sub-bookkeeping? Yes, okay, the hyphen is cheating." So now my question is whether the word would have a hyphen in it.
I looked in three of my own dictionaries and could not find SUBBOOKKEEPER: Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (c. 1991), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (c. 2002), and Webster's All-In-One Dictionary & Thesaurus, Second Edition (2013).
2 comments:
I didn't know, but, fortunately, we have Google for us cheaters.
Okay, so I had to try that and — sure, enough — Google gives the answer: BOOKKEEPER. I was planning to "surprise" you with BOOKKEEPING (a second word), but I discovered I had overlooked the fact that the word BOOKKEEPER has a plural: BOOKKEEPERS. Well, of course! So that's three English words that have three pairs of consecutive letters. I also discovered this comment (edited slightly):
If you want to get a little esoteric (and a little disputed), you can go one pair better than that! SUBBOOKKEEPER is the only word found in an English language dictionary with four pairs of double letters in a row. This word is in W2, but is not in W3 or OED2 (link http://www.definition-of.com/subbookkeeper).
I was also able to find the word SUBBOOKKEEPER in several places online:
(1) https://www.definition-of.com/subbookkeeper
(2) "One of Martin Gardner's books mentions the bookkeeper's assistant or subbookkeeper." But another person said, "Does the assistant to the bookkeeper engage in sub-bookkeeping? Yes, okay, the hyphen is cheating."
So now my question is whether the word would have a hyphen in it.
I looked in three of my own dictionaries and could not find SUBBOOKKEEPER: Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (c. 1991), Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (c. 2002), and Webster's All-In-One Dictionary & Thesaurus, Second Edition (2013).
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