For the purposes of this article, any word which has appeared in a recognised general English dictionary published in the 20th century or later is considered a candidate. For interest, some archaic words, non-standard words and proper names are also included. The treatment of words of foreign origin can be problematic.

The entire history of English involves influence and loanwords from other languages, and this process continues today (see Foreign language influences in English). However, there is a grey area between foreign words and words accepted as English. The Oxford English Dictionary calls such words "resident aliens".

Generally, a word of foreign origin is legitimate here if it may be encountered in an English text without translation. It is important to note the difference between vowel letters and vowel sounds. A string of letters may represent a single vowel sound (like ea in head).

This section deals with words that have many vowel letters, which may, however, represent a smaller number of vowel sounds. Unless otherwise specified, "vowels" here refers to the regular vowels, a, e, i, o, u.

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