Words Made Of Roman Numerals

mollusque commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

Are u's allowed, since they would have been written as v's in Latin? E.g., lixivium.

January 22, 2011

Silenturion commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

Geez, hadn't thought of that. I remember that scene in Indiana Jones where he spells Jehovah with a J and almost falls to his death.

For truly Latin words like lixivium: I say go for it. You try it first, so the rest of us can see if you fall to your death. Mwahahaha!

January 23, 2011

Dan337 commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

Here’s a cheat:

grep -ivh "^IVXLCDM'" /usr/share/dict/*-english |

sort --unique

Here’s what it gives me. (I removed single-character “words”.) It looks like we’ve got most of them. You may get better results with a better lexicon.

Cd, Ci, Cid, civic, civil, Cl, Cm, Di, did, dill, dim, Dix, id, I'd, ill, Ill, I'll, I'm, Li, lid, livid, MCI, Md, mi, mid, mil, mild, mill, Mill, Mimi, mimic, mix, Vic, vim, & vivid

I find it alarming that these lexicons don’t include “cm” and “mm”.

January 23, 2011

Dan337 commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

Here are the extra words yielded (from the very limited lexicons I’m using) by mollusque’s suggestion:

cilium, Cu, cud, cull, cumuli, dud, dull, Lu, lucid, lull, Lulu, mu, mud, mull, mum, muumuu, & um

(That’s not bad at all.) I’m not brave enough to add them.

My personal opinion is that Us and Vs shouldn’t appear in the same word, so the are no Vs in the list. (That excludes “lixivium”, I’m afraid, although it is a thoroughly gorgeous word.) But I don’t make the rules here.

January 23, 2011

Dan337 commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

Does anyone object to the chemical element symbols (“Cd”, “Cl”, “Cm” and “Md”)? (I already added “Di” and “Li” because they’re also names.) How about the unit abbreviations “cm”, “mm” and “Ci”?

January 23, 2011

Dan337 commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

@mollusque: I take it back. That word looks mighty fine on this list.

January 26, 2011

Dan337 commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

I installed some better lexicons, so here are some expanded word lists. The batch with no “U”s contains 84 words:

Cd, Ci, Cid, cill, civic, civil, Civil, Cl, Clim, Cm, dc, Di, did, Didi, dill, Dill, dilli, dim, divi, dividivi, Dix, dixi, Dixil, dm, id, Id, I'd, ill, Ill, I'll, Im, I'm, imid, imidic, immix, Ld, li, Li, lid, Lil, Lili, lill, Lilli, Lim, Liv, Livi, livid, Livvi, lm, Lviv, lx, MCI, Md, mi, mic, Mic, mid, Mid, midi, Midi, mil, Mil, mild, mill, Mill, Milli, mim, Mimi, mimic, mix, Mv, Vi, Vic, Vici, vid, vild, vill, villi, vim, Viv, Vivi, vivid, Vivl, & xi

There are 62 that employ “U” but not “V”:

cilium, Cu, cud, culicid, cull, Cull, culm, cumuli, Diu, Du, duci, dud, Dud, dui, Dulci, dull, dumdum, Dumm, dux, ilium, Ilium, Lilium, limuli, Liu, Lu, Luci, Lucic, lucid, lud, Lud, ludic, lull, Lull, lulu, Lulu, lum, lux, Lux, milium, millilux, mu, mucic, mucid, mucluc, mud, muid, mull, Mull, mulmul, mulmull, mum, mumm, mumu, muumuu, mux, Ul, Ulm, ulu, Ulu, um, umm, & xu

We end with the six bigeners:

diluvium, illuvium, lixivium, luv, Vul, & vum

January 26, 2011

Silenturion commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

I must admit a weakness for the u phoneme.

January 26, 2011

ruzuzu commented on the list words-made-of-roman-numerals

Fantastic list! I just arrived here after getting ilicic as a random word.

May 9, 2017