A thousand boring meetings

I was in a meeting this week at work, and to be frank, it was kind of boring. As my mind wandered, I mused that I must have sat through a thousand boring meetings in my life. But then I started to give this idea some more thought.

First of all, I go to a lot of meetings. Seems I always have. It would not be a stretch for me to say that, on average, I attend at least one boring meeting a week (maybe I get bored too easily?). And if I attend one boring meeting per week, that would equate to about fifty boring meetings a year. Therefore, in the past twenty years (the bulk of my adult life), without too much exaggeration, I think I can say that I have indeed been in a thousand boring meetings.

My cardinal rule for boring meetings is this: Do not fall asleep! It’s just a conviction I have, and I really do everything in my power not to doze off in meetings. It could lead to any number of embarrassing situations, not to mention it is not courteous to the speaker. So on the bright side, I rarely snooze through meetings. However, the bad news is that I often find myself playing all sorts of mental games to keep my mind occupied and awake—and unfortunately I end up not paying attention.

In particular, over the years I have concocted many mental games or puzzles, normally based on letters of the alphabet, words, or patterns of words on the overhead powerpoint slides typically presented at meetings. Here is an example of a game that I am currently working.

Simply stated, the “game” is to answer this question: What (English) word can you find that contains the highest number of consecutive letters in it? I mean “consecutive” in an alphabetical sense, i.e. l, m, n, o, p.

For example, the word “like” has two consecutive letters in it: k and l. The word “mopping” has four: m, n, o, and p. To date, I have found two words that contain six consecutive letters (I’m not going to tell you what they are right now).

So, for a prize, can you be the first to come up with a word with six (or more) consecutive letters that is different from the two that I have in my head right now? [You have my pledge of honesty in the disclosure of my answers.]

The only caveat I have is that basic Scrabble rules apply. It has to be a real, normal English word that you can find in the dictionary. No “forced” words are permitted. For instance, if something is sort of outstanding, one might say it is “outstandingish.” I would not consider that a word.