An answer on vowels from my most faithful answerer, Matthew:

 

That bloody vowel question has been haunting me, especially as I though of anterior almost immediately (one off...).

In the end I worked out how to do it using the spell checking progamme that comes with Linux and some almost ingenious scripting. So here's a list of words with a e i o u in that order (and only appering once):

facetious

abstemious

obviously, facetious is the shortest...

these are the only 2 words in the computer dictionary (153,751 words) that obey the rule.

There are lots of words that work with vowels in any order, here are some of the shorter ones:

7 letters:

sequoia    

8 letters:
dialogue     
equation     
euphoria     
jalousie  

9 letters:
  
auctioned
armouried     
armouries     
aureoling     
authorise     
autopsied     
autopsies     
behaviour     
cautioned     
cautioner     
cointreau     
dialogued     
dialogues   
education
emulation
equations    
equivocal
euphorias    
exudation
facetious
favourite
housemaid     
inoculate     
inquorate     
nefarious     
odalisque
pneumonia     
savouries
savourier    
tenacious    
vapourise     
veracious     
vexatious

It's interesting, some of the best words have all the vowels in them - perhaps it's the rich toffee-chewing voicng that does it...

--

Jan 03

Another reply from a new correspondent:

This is so weird...I was looking for the answer to this question myself (my Boss is fond of brain-teasers) when your askings page appeared on google.

I found this answer on

http://www.businessballs.com/businessballspuzzlesanswers.htm

so I can't take the credit.

AEIOU: Four words in the English language, each having one of each of the vowels (aeiou) in the right alphabetical order:

facetious (meaning sarcastic),

abstemious (meaning sparing or moderate),

arterious (pertaining to artery) and

annelidous (pertaining to annelid, which is a segmented worm).

--

From Bart (11.07):

Definitive though the vowels answer may be, you might still like the geographical name Euboia (although in English 'Euboea' seems to be the more common variant).