One-Letter Words

Think you know your ABCs?

In Word Ways #5.4, Darryl Francis did a piece on “One-Letter Words,” in which he announced, “We decided to do some research and chase up definitions of the 26 one-letter words which got away from stereotype definitions as far as possible.” “Stereotype definitions,” in this case, were definitions you could infer pretty directly, like “abbreviation for radius” for “r” or “building add-on” for “L.”

I was moved to do my own version with today’s resources. Mine is not as hard as Francis’s, but I have been made sure not to include any definitions that start with the same letter as the letter they define.

There is one definition for each letter in the list below. A couple of these are sometimes seen in the company of other punctuation marks, but they don’t have to be. A few are capitalized by default. With one exception, I’ve also stayed away from strictly pop-culture definitions like “Slasher porn film of 2022” for X.

As well as
Base of the natural logarithm
Certain moth
Complete reversal
Create by knitting
Defeat
Easy, in most problem-solving
Easygoing, relaxed person
Ego
Expression of wonder or surprise
Flying gaggle
Going to or have
High-level coding language
”Hope,” according to a certain movie
Informal shirt
Marijuana cigarette
Mass-specific acceleration unit
”Message received and understood”
Mess (up)
Noted source that influenced the Torah
Politician who said, “"We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations, to do everything they can, to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you...now watch this drive.”
Prolific inventor
Sexual prowess
Small interval of sleep
Thursday
Unknown

In the same issue, Francis did another piece on color words—but color descriptions have come a long way since 1972. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how far!