One-Letter Words, a Dictionary
Read One-Letter Words, a Dictionary Online
Authors: Craig Conley
Tags: #Social Science, #Popular Culture, #Reference, #General
WORDS
A Dictionary
The conquest of the superfluous gives us greater spiritual
excitement than the conquest of the necessary.
—Gaston Bachelard,
French philosopher
WHEN THE WORDS GET IN THE WAY
Ninety-nine down: a one letter word meaning
something indefinite.
The indefinite article or—would it perhaps be
the personal pronoun?
But what runs across it? Four letter word meaning
something
With a bias towards its opposite, the second letter
Must be the same as the one letter word.
It is time
We left these puzzles and started to be ourselves. And started to live, is it not?
—Louis MacNeice,
Solstices
W
e live in a world of mass communication. As you read this, words are staring
you
in the face. But they’re not the only ones. Miles above you, words are flown in jets across the country and over the oceans. They are tossed at 5 A.M. on newspaper routes. They are delivered six days a week by mail carriers. They’re propped up on display at book stores. They’re bouncing off satellites and showing up on television and cell phone screens.
We are constantly bombarded by language pollution. And these empty words are overwhelming. Either they scream out to be noticed (as in TV commercials), or they hide in small print (at the bottom of contracts), or they bury their meaning behind jargon (generated by computers and bureaucracy).
It’s enough to make you speechless.
Have you ever started to write a letter only to realize that you have nothing to report? “Dear Jan: Nothing exciting has happened here this month.” No news may be good news, but it still doesn’t amount to anything.
Sometimes you do have something to say, but “the words get in the way.” You can’t find the precise word for what you mean, and every word you can think of gives the wrong impression or is misleading.
The solution is to get back to basics. Put your trust in the ABC’s. With this dictionary of one-letter words, you have the power to fight jargon and to simplify modern communication. It’s now up to you.
THE SKINNY ON THE DICTIONARY OF
ONE-LETTER WORDS
“I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter!
Isn’t that grand?”
—The White Queen to Alice in
Through the Looking Glass
E
ver since I wrote the very first edition of
One-Letter Words: A Dictionary,
I haven’t had to pay for a single drink. But I didn’t set out to create the ultimate secret weapon for winning bar bets. I mean, a dictionary is supposed to be scholarly, right? Then again, a dictionary like mine obviously doesn’t belong sitting on a dusty reference shelf next to a highbrow encyclopedia. Something this weird was bound to grow wings of its own, and it has now found itself at the center of an Internet phenomenon, the recipient of a tribute song in Sweden, the subject of radio programs, and even a prop in stand-up comedy routines. Why? “Y” indeed!
Upon being told about my dictionary, the average person will laugh in disbelief, then—certain that I must be joking—ask just how many one-letter words there could possibly be. Nine out of ten people will guess that there are just two: the pronoun
I
and the article
a.
The occasional smarty-pants will grant that
O
might make a third, as in “O Romeo!” It’s when I retort that there are 1,000 one-letter words that wagers get made—and won.
The fact of the matter is that a word is any letter or group of letters that has meaning and is used as a unit of language. So even though there are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, my research shows that they stand for 1,000 distinct units of meaning.
One-letter words are the building blocks of communication. I like to joke that learning them is easy and spelling them is even easier. But I definitely don’t sell them short.
The most important English words are
small
ones. And those small words—which occur most often in our speech, reading, and writing—are relatively few in number. Just ten words account for 25 percent of all the words we use, and they all have only one syllable. Fifty words account for 50 percent of all the words in our speech, and they, too, all have only one syllable.
Two
of the top six words we use in speech and writing have only one letter:
a
and
I. A
is the third most frequently occurring word in the English language.
I
is the sixth most frequently occurring. And there are other important one-letter words, which comprise the majority of my dictionary.
One of my favorites has to be
X,
which boasts more than seventy definitions of its own. X marks the spot on a pirate’s map where treasure is buried. It’s a hobo symbol meaning handouts are available. X tells you where to sign your name on a contract, and it’s also an illiterate person’s signature. X indicates a choice on a voting ballot and a cross-stitch of thread. Mysterious people may be named Madame X, and the archetype of a mad scientist is Dr. X. X is an incorrect answer on a test, and it’s a rating for an adult movie. X is a power of magnification, an axis on a graph, and a female chromosome. It is a multiplication operator, a letter of the alphabet, and an arbitrary point in time. X is a kiss at the end of a love letter.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I first got the idea to write a dictionary of one-letter words. I remember once hearing about a bizarre Japanese crime novel from 1929,
The Devil’s Apprentice
by Shiro Hamao, and how the entire work consisted of a single letter. The single letter was obviously a written correspondence, but I initially envisioned a single letter of the alphabet. And I marveled at how bizarre indeed it would be to write a detective story that all boiled down to a solitary letter of the alphabet. I imagined some sort of gritty retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel
The Scarlet Letter
in which a bloody letter
A
would serve as the only scrap of evidence to unravel a seedy tale of adultery, heartbreak, and murder.
I also remember how the poet Karen Drayne once wrote about an imaginary country where the language is so simple they have only one letter in the alphabet, and it works because “Context is everything.” That got me thinking about how a single letter of the alphabet can represent all sorts of distinct meanings depending on the context.
I wrote the very first entry for my dictionary in a fit of procrastination. I was in graduate school, spending many hours a day in the library, purportedly working on my thesis. All those enormous unabridged dictionaries on the shelves intrigued me, and on a whim I started looking up the entries for the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. I jotted down all sorts of fascinating tidbits, and those notes became the bare bones for my dictionary of one-letter words. But I wasn’t content to end it there. I knew that there must be even more meanings, and I went on a quest to discover them, scouring novels, plays, newspaper articles, magazine features, movie scripts, and writings on the Internet.
I wasn’t satisfied with collecting mere definitions, however. I wanted to prove the legitimacy of those definitions with actual examples from literature. For example, one definition of
T
is “perfectly,” and I found a simple quotation from the eighteenth-century novel
Tristram Shandy
to accompany it: “We could manage this matter to a T.” For a rather boring definition of
W,
“someone designated W,” I found a line by comedian Woody Allen: “Should I marry W? Not if she won’t tell me the other letters in her name!”
The occasional idiosyncratic usage of a one-letter word didn’t bother me, because I knew that people were discovering new concepts every day. Shakespeare, for example, coined more than 1,500 new words that were adopted into the popular culture. If people were using one-letter words in new ways, I wanted to be there to document them.
About four years ago, I finally put a free version of the book online at blueray.com, as a way of sharing my research with whatever audience I could find. I dedicated the Web version of my dictionary to the White Queen character from
Through the Looking Glass.
She famously told Alice, “I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter! Isn’t that grand?” It turned out that the White Queen and I weren’t the only ones who were finding one-letter words to be grand.
All on its own, the online version of my dictionary was creating a firestorm of interest. In a matter of weeks, nearly 1,200 other Web sites were linking to my site. One hundred and forty of those sites were university, high school, and community libraries that recommend my dictionary on their reference links pages.
Bloggers were reviewing my work as well, giving it some funny praise. Doug MacClure called it “The most perverse yet serious reference manual on the Web.” Edward Pelegrino called it “Interesting and possibly useful.” (I like his use of the word
possibly.
It’s so full of possibilities!) The Martinova blog dubbed it “Fun for bored lit-geeks.” I got the biggest kicks when I found out the likes of professional wordsmith Richard Lederer and Encyclopædia Britannica Online were linking to my site. All this Web linkage reassured me that while my research might be quirky it wasn’t necessarily superfluous.
Before I knew it, CNET Radio was e-mailing me to do a spot on a morning program. I was initially terrified, but I made it through an interview with talk show host Alex Bennett in his “Weird Web Wednesday” segment.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, a musician in Sweden was recording a tribute to my dictionary entitled, you guessed it, “The Dictionary of One-Letter Words.” Artist Kristofer Ström, whose band is called Ljudbilden & Piloten, composed his ambient rock–style tribute using guitar, bass, zither, trumpet, strings, drums, human voice, and field recordings. Released by the Barcelona label Nosordo Records in 2003, the track is still receiving radio play.
As I read for pleasure, now and then I continue to find new examples of usage to quote in my dictionary. So the project is always growing and evolving. In addition to the free online version at blueray.com, a print edition is available through CafePress.com.
I’ve lately branched out to write two smaller companion dictionaries: all-consonant words and all-vowel words. These have been of particular interest to Scrabble players, especially since I seek to document my definitions with literary citations. However, competitive Scrabble players have to be sticklers when it comes to rules, and I don’t care to get in the middle of any controversy. I just do this stuff for fun.
To the best of my knowledge, my dictionary of one-letter words is the first-known such volume since the sixteenth century, when a Buddhist lexicographer named Saddhammakitti enumerated Pali words of one letter in a work entitled
Ekakkharakosa.
It may have taken 300 years to bridge the gap, but I like to think that Saddhammakitti’s tradition lives on in my own dictionary of one-letter words.
AN ENTIRE ALPHABET OF
SCARLET LETTERS
I
s it preposterous to wonder whether letters of the alphabet have an inherent color? As I conduct ongoing research for
One-Letter Words: A Dictionary,
I can’t help but ask myself why it is that letters are so often described as having a rosy hue. Most readers will recall the infamous red
A
of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel, but as Steven Heller pointed out, “
The Scarlet Letter
is not the only scarlet letter” (
The Education of an Illustrator
). Nor are scarlet letters solely brands of shame, sin, or doom. A “red-letter day” is a holiday, or at least a memorable or happy day (the phrase likely dating from 1549, when saint’s days were marked in red in the
Book of Common Prayer
). Can there be a natural wavelength that writers instinctively pick up on? Virginia Woolf’s eyes seemed keen enough to detect infrared all the way to
Z:
“After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance” (
To the Lighthouse
).
Biblical allusions associate the color scarlet with sins of the body, and by coloring their letters red, authors seem to flesh them out and add a spark of life. Take, for example, this description by Brian Moynahan: “[W]hen I came to read [the psalms], they seemed written in letters of fire or of scarlet” (
The Faith: A History of Christianity
). Nathaniel Hawthorne also mentioned a burning quality to his scarlet letter: “[Placing it to my breast,] I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron” (
The Scarlet Letter
). Sparkling red letters can even burn the imagination: “In my head a scarlet letter blazed,” says Betty Fussell (
My Kitchen Wars
). Whether or not the context involves physical branding with a red-hot iron (examples would be rather too gruesome for inclusion here), blood imagery often figures in. As John Lawton wrote, “She rubbed the [handkerchief’s embroidered] scarlet letter between finger and thumb, felt the crispness of dried blood” (
Bluffing Mr. Churchill
). George C. Chesbro dramatically combines blood and fire imagery in his depiction of an alphabet volcano “spewing what appeared to be incomplete, fractured sentences and clustered gobs of words that were half submerged in a river of blood red lava” (
The Language of Cannibals
). And consider this more serene example by poet Madeline Defrees, who seems to agree that scarlet letters are written by nature herself and in turn read by nature as well: “And who, /when scarlet letters/flutter in air from sumac and maple,/will be there to/receive them? Only a sigh/on the wind in the land of bending willow” (“Almanac,”
Blue Dusk: New and Selected Poems, 1951–2001
).
In most cases, scarlet letters have a dazzling quality that you can’t help but notice. Here’s one example by Wilkie Collins: “[B]elow the small print appeared a perfect galaxy of fancifully shaped scarlet letters, which fascinated all eyes” (
Hide and Seek
). Groucho Marx recalled being fascinated by similar red letters: “In large, scarlet letters [the handbills] said, ‘Would you like to communicate with your loved ones even though they are no longer in the flesh?’” (
Memoirs of a Mangy Lover
). It is as if the letters of Groucho’s handbill had a rosy flesh of their own, and enough charge to bridge the gap between the living and the dead. Here’s another example of a dazzling red letter from Ian Rankin: “There was a big letter X marking the spot [for a parachute jump]. It was made from two lengths of shiny red material, weighted down with stones” (
Resurrection Men: An Inspector Rebus Novel
).
Michael McCollum sums up nicely the impact of scarlet letters: “The [comet collision] display froze, save for a single blinking word etched in scarlet letters:
Impact!
” (
Thunderstrike!
) Red letters have impact, alright!
What follows is an entire alphabet of scarlet letters that I have collected, many as marks of shame but others simply pulsing with the red blush of life (or at least a strawberry birthmark). In a few cases I cite more than one favorite example from literature. Whether or not red is definitively the natural color of the alphabet is a question that is bound to remain controversial, but the body of evidence is certainly mounting.
A | “The next day she had felt that the scarlet letter A—for Alcohol—was seared across her forehead, but her parents continued in their befuddled ignorance.” |
B | “The shirt and bloomers [of the baseball suit] were gray, with narrow red stripes. There were two big red letter B’s lying loose in the box.”— |
C | “From now on Joe is the man with the Scarlet Letter. He has ‘C’ [for Communist] written on his coat, put there by men who know him best.”— |
D | “Some of the women students dressed in black and pinned a red ‘D’ on their sweaters. ‘It’s my scarlet letter,’ one explained. ‘I dance. I’m a sinner.’” |
“[S]ince there is a no-fault divorce law, a party can be perfectly innocent and still get the scarlet letter—in this case a D—stitched on his shirt.”— | |
E | “Barring sewing a scarlet letter E on her clothes, they knew enough about her daughter’s mental illness [erotomania] and past history to keep her away from, or at least warn, any female authority figures who might unwittingly cross her path.”— |
F | “[T]here had been an incomplete letter painted in blood red on Sarah’s wall. At the time, Francesca and Bragg had thought it might be an F.”— |
“I was going to fail. Fail! No B, no gentleman’s C—Fail. F. The big one: my own Scarlet Letter. Branded on my forehead—F, for Fuckup.” | |
“Never mind that they are doctors, lawyers, world leaders; they must still wear a scarlet letter, a giant red F, if, heaven forbid, they’re fat.”— | |
G | “The first illustration was of a young man with short wavy hair and a fringe of reddish beard, standing by himself inside the arc of a giant red G.” |
H | “You look and smell like a street whore from the slums. Did you know it is within regulations for me to brand you with the letter H for harlot?…Tomorrow night I will fetch the brand which imprints the scarlet letter. I think I will put it upon your breasts. Yes, an H upon each. Two H’s. They will brand you forever as Helford’s Harlot!” — |
I | “Has a big red letter ‘I’ appeared on my chest, branding me as infertile to the world?”—“The Goddess Speaks” by Dot Shigemura |
J | “If they do walk free, they should carry a warning to the rest of us. Maybe a scarlet letter J, for jackal, sewn onto all their clothes.”—“Bottom Line Attracts Bottom Feeders” by Michael Miller |
“Unless Jesus appears before us with a scarlet letter J on His forehead and unless Jesus shows us the wounds in His side we treat Him as just another of life’s encounters or acquaintances.”—“Prayers of the Passion” by Sue Eidahl | |
K | “Mark born or unborn [children] with a red letter K.”—“Count Your Sins” by Audrey Tarvids |
L | “It was like I’d been branded with a scarlet letter L for liar, and I felt as though no one treated me the same for weeks after that.” |
“For years, many on the left have ducked the ‘L’ word. While characterized by the right as pink, the letter, unfortunately, has become tainted as scarlet.” | |
M | “Sometimes, I feel as though I’m wearing a hor-rifying scarlet letter—only the letter is M, for Murderess.”— |
N | “When a brand-new exhibitor with her first dog joins a kennel club, she wears a large scarlet letter (N for Novice) on her breast that is visible to everyone but her.” |
O | “A giant O [referring to the stigma of an open relationship] would hang above our house, a scarlet letter emblazoned upon the sky for the general protection of the citizenry.”— |
P | “Halfway up the hill a prominent lump of gray stone the size of a hayrick had been painted with a large, lop-sided letter P in scarlet paint, so that it was visible to any ship anchored in the lagoon.” |
Q | “I didn’t know that there was a pain like that in the world. And I writhed from the torture of it—a clotted red letter ‘Q’ spread across my eyes and started to quiver.” |
R | “Our lucite deal mementos would need to be amended to add this [subscript] R, now the scarlet letter of derivatives.” |
“The weight of an invisible scarlet letter R, for rapist.” | |
S | “Once she was defeated, she put on the scarlet letter—S for secrecy and shame—and did not tell either of her two husbands or her son about me.” |
“‘It’s all getting to be a real burden for those of us who still smoke.’ Susan Saunders says. ‘Today’s “scarlet letter” is the big red S we smokers feel we wear around our necks.’” | |
T | “I was only good for punishment, and punished I was, never fear. I pinned on my scarlet letter—mine would be a T, for toe-sucking—and wore it everywhere, with a sort of perverse comfort.”— |
“Basically, being temporary means you don’t exist in the federal system. You’re invisible…. Do I get to have a scarlet letter T painted on my forehead?” | |
U | “[A]nyone who challenges their policies is threatened with the new Scarlet Letter—U—for Unpatriotic.”—“Support Our Troops?” by Gregory Reck |
V | “Although self-pity thwarts self-acceptance, wearing the scarlet letter V (for victim) allows us to take the moral high ground.” |
“[W]hat have we come to, that the scarlet letter these days isn’t A, but V [for Virginity]?” | |
W | “Davenport marked all nomads in his [eugen-ics] table with a scarlet W (for Wanderlust, the common German term for ‘urge to roam’). He then examined the distribution of W’s through families and generations to reach one of the most peculiar and improbable of conclusions ever advanced in a famous study: nomadism, he argued, is caused by a single gene.” |
X | “Branded with the scarlet letter ‘X’ in the new MPAA ratings system, |
Y | “[I]t is the symbols of Communism that return to attack and kill Benny, and in the last lines of [Benedikt Erofeev’s] novel [ |
Z | “Sesar got up and looked at his watch. In the center of the black face was a red letter Z. It began to flash.” |