Amazing Words

By Richard Lederer

Marion Street Press

Copyright © 2012 Richard Lederer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936863-30-3
CHAPTER 1

A is an article, as in "a word," as well as the first letter of the alphabet. Turns out that quite the majority of our letters are also words or sound like words:

A: a

B: be, bee

C: sea, see

G: gee

I: aye, eye, I

J: jay

K: quay

L: el

M: em

N: en

O: O, oh, owe

P: pea, pee

Q: cue, queue

R: are

T: tea, tee

U: ewe, yew, you

X: ex

Y: why

And more than half our letters, when pluralized, sound like words:

B's: bees

C's: seas, sees, seize

E's: ease

G's: geez

I's: ayes, eyes

J's: jays

K's: quays

L's: els

M's: ems

N's: ens

O's: ohs, owes

P's: peas, pease, pees

Q's: cues, queues

T's: teas, tease, tees

U's: ewes, use, yews, youse

X's: exes

Y's: wise, whys

(See EXPEDIENCY, I, Q-TIPS, S, SILENT, W, X.)

Abecedarian is a letter-perfect word that means "pertaining to the alphabet, or alphabetically arranged." This book is abecedarian in both senses of that definition.

The word alphabet is a joining of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, ITLαITL [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and ITLβITL [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. The Greeks inherited their letters from the Phoenicians, who probably took their alpha from the Hebrew aleph, "ox."

From alpha to omega,
You can bet the alphabet,
Like a painting done by Degas,
Will leap and pirouette.
See dancing words, entrancing words,
Sterling words unfurling.
Watch prancing words, enhancing words,
Whirling, twirling, swirling.

The old Cambodian alphabet, with seventy-four letters, is the world's longest. Rotokas, spoken on the South Pacific island of Bougainville, uses only eleven letters.

Here's a look at the letters in our alphabet from different vantage points:

• BCDEGPTVZ, when sounded, all end with a long e sound, thus rhyming with each other.

• FHLMNRSX, when sounded, all end in consonant sounds.

• CDILMVX are Roman numerals.

• AEFHIKLMNTVWXYZ are made with straight lines.

• abcdefghjmnopqrstu include curves.

• AHIMOTUVWXY exhibit vertical left-right symmetry. They look the same in a mirror.

• BCDEHIKOX exhibit horizontal symmetry. Their top and bottom halves reflect each other.

Abracadabra is the longest common word with five a's and features the four-letter abra at the beginning and the end, with a cad in between. The incantation may be derived from the Gnostic (early Christian) word Abraxas ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), Greek for "God," the source of 365 emanations. Purportedly, the Greek letters for Abraxas add up to 365 when translated numerologically.

(See DEEDED, MISSISSIPPI, STRENGTHLESSNESS.)

Ace. In ace, the first, third, and fifth letters of the alphabet are joined. Ho hum, you yawn, and I agree because I haven't been playing with a full deck. I'm a jack ace who ought to be dealt with, you say to yourself. But think on this: if you add up the number of letters in that deck — ace king queen jack ten nine eight seven six five four three two — the total comes to fifty-two!

Here's a cute poser that involves ace: What is the pattern of the following names? The answer has nothing to do with the letters, syllables, or sounds in each name. Rather, the answer is "straightforward":

Eddie Rickenbacker, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth, John F. Kennedy, Bo Derek

Answer: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten

And how is marriage like a deck of cards?

Answer: You start off with two hearts and a diamond — and pretty soon you want to grab a club and use a spade.

(See DIE, JACKPOT.)

Adam is a Hebrew name that means "mankind." Adam's apple is so called because many men, but few women, exhibit a bulge of laryngeal cartilage in front of their throats. According to male-dominated folklore, Eve swallowed her apple without care or residue, while a chunk of the fruit stuck in the throat of the innocent and misled Adam.

Adam and Eve were the happiest couple in history. That's because she couldn't tell him how many other men she could have married — and he couldn't tell her how much he loved his mother's cooking.

When was Adam created? A little before Eve ("eve"). Eve was the first palindromic word, so Adam introduced himself with the first palindromic sentence:

Name Me Man

Backward and forward, as you will perceive
Read Adam's first greeting to dear Mother Eve:
"Madam, I'm Adam." Now we can conceive
That her answer was simply, "Eve, mad Adam, Eve."

(See AGAMEMNON, BIBLE, CIVIC, KINNIKINNIK, NAPOLEON, PALINDROME, SENSUOUSNESS, WONTON, ZOONOOZ.)

Aegilops, meaning "an ulcer in part of the eye," is an eight-letter word in which all letters proceed in alphabetical order with no double letters. But let's admit that aegilops is pretty obscure. Using more common words, we can get up to six letters:

abhors

almost

begins

bijoux

biopsy

chimps

chinos

chintz

Agamemnon ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), the name of the mythical Greek king so prominent in the Iliad and other literary masterpieces, is constructed from three three-letter palindromes: Aga, mem, non.

(See ADAM, CIVIC, KINNIKINNIK, NAPOLEON, PALINDROME, SENSUOUSNESS, WONTON, ZOONOOZ.)

Ague is one of a few two-syllable words ("ay-gyoo") that become one-syllable words when letters are added at their beginning, as in ague/vague or ague/plague. Other examples include:

aged/paged

naked/snaked

ragged/bragged

rugged/shrugged

winged/twinged

(See RODE.)

Ahoy originated as a word used to signal a ship or boat. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, insisted on ahoy as the correct way of answering the telephone, but it was his rival, inventor Thomas Edison, who coined what became the universal word to answer the telephone — hello, itself an alteration of the earlier English holla!, "Stop! Pay attention!" Nowadays, only Montgomery Burns, The Simpsons superannuated scrooge, uses "Ahoy-hoy" to take a telephone call.

(See GOOD-BYE.)

Ai. The shortest two-syllable words are the rather obscure aa, a rough lava; ai, a three-toed sloth; and Io, a moon of Jupiter.

Air is a member of the most populous family of homophones, words that are spelled differently but sound the same:

air

aire

Ayr

Ayer

ere

err

Eyre

heir

Note that err is a member of air family. While many pronunciation experts would argue that "to 'air' is human, to 'ur' divine" (thank you, Alexander Pope), the airy sounding of err is firmly established in American English.

(See SCENT.)

Akimbo, "with hands on hip and elbows bent outward," may trace its ancestry to the Icelandic kengboginn, "bent hookwise, looking...