One-Letter Words: A Dictionary

by Craig Conley

Merriam-Webster, move over! Until now, no English dictionary ever found the fun or the fascination in revealing the meanings of letters. One-Letter Words, a Dictionary illuminates the more than 1,000 surprising definitions associated with each letter in the English alphabet. For instance, Conley uncovers seventy-six distinct uses of the letter X, the most versatile, most printed letter in the English language. Using facts, figures, quotations, and etymologies, the author provides a complete and enjoyable understanding of the one-letter word. Conley teaches us that each letter's many different meanings span multiple subjects, including science—B denotes a blood type and also is a symbol for boron on the periodic table of elements—and history—in the Middle Ages, B was branded on a blasphemer's forehead. With the letter A, he reminds us that A is not only a bra size, but also a musical note. One-Letter Words, a Dictionary is a rich, thought-provoking, and curious compendium of the myriad definitions attributed to each letter of the English alphabet. This book is the essential desk companion, gift, or reference volume for a vast array of wordsmiths, puzzle lovers, teachers, students, librarians, and armchair linguists will all find One-Letter Words, a Dictionary a must-have.

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Language

272 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

"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."


And people say English is a hard language to learn. 😃

[James Swenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Especially useful if you need to check the spelling.

[J. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have really strong feelings that this book is terrible. And I'm pretty sure I could do a better job in three weeks with access to google. So here's my review:

The Good: Nice typography.

The Bad: So, Craig Conley and I need to have a discussion about what constitutes a "dictionary," or, more specifically, what constitutes a "definition." For instance, I'm teaching logic right now. When I say, "Let p represent the statement 'Men are mortal.'" That phrase does NOT become a definition for p. In fact, if it did, every letter of the alphabet would have tens of thousands of meanings: think of every problem that ever ended with "x=....". Apparently, Conley would have us believe those are all definitions of x.

Also, the letter B does not mean the sound of the letter B, nor the shape of the letter B, nor a printer's block which looks like a letter B. Those are all definitions for anything, like: Pig - the sound of the word 'pig.' Pig - the shape of a pig. Pig - a block with a pig on it. I mean, we do use words this way colloquially, but that's certainly not the same as a definition. (But note that putting those definitions for all 26 letters certainly pads the page count! Wink wink.)

Also, any accidental usage of letters as counting objects shouldn't really count unless they're extremely common. (So: D as a grade I'm ok with, but D as 'the fourth object, when things are lettered' I'm not.)

The book is also full of weird hippy, new-age-y usage. So we get things like "the sound vibration of the consonant G means goodness or God" instead of *obvious* everyday scientific usage, like g for gram.

Finally, in the field I'm most familiar with, mathematics, the author does a ridiculously laughable job. He apparently picked up some random math book (it was a matrix math book), found sentences like, "We'll use Q to represent upper-triangular matrices," then uses that as a definition. Of course, variable usage, again, does not constitute a definition unless it's VERY standard. (So, x for horizontal location on a plane is probably ok.) In one particularly funny instance, he didn't even bother to figure out what the book said: he just put: "P [or whatever] - a matrix with certain properties." REALLY? Is that how we define things now? Car - a vehicle of some sort. Cow - some type of animal. Dictionary - a book with certain types of words in it. It's just infantile.

To further condemn the math usage, mathematicians have a very standard set of special typographical symbols for certain common sets, like natural, rational, and real numbers (and others.) For instance, for the integers, we use a special Z which has a double vertical slant. It's typographically pretty, a Z, and only has one meaning. Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that should be in this book? Alas, it is not.

Surely this book is a joke, right? Right?

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something for my word collection. This is a bed side book that will be read off and on again.

[Anetq · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed reading this in times of Corona with a reduced attention span and too little time and concentration. This can be read in bits and is enjoyable if you like words and language.
It is a terrible dictionary obviously collected from a few random sources. The "foreign language" examples are totally random and quite laughable. O = or, whether in Italian (yes, possibly, but also in Spanish and there are menings in quite a few other I know) I see from another review that the math-meanings are also picked from one random math book - so don't read this for the rigorousness of a proper dictionary or encyclopedic knowledge! Also most parts are obviously copied in for each letter.

So read it for the pleasure of reading things in alphabetic order in a time of disorder and confusion.
Read it for the enjoyment of random odd examples from literature of people and things being referred to by letters, and strange usage examples. Except where was Kafka's K in the K section?? #fail

I enjoyed this for the little Jorge Luis BorgesBorgesian "lost in the library of life" moments. Even though it is by no means anywhere near Borges eminent elegance. If made we want to dig into those two volumes by William H. Gass I have, all those postmodernist pieces of metafiction, I also want to read Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish and O, all those Borges volumen that are calling to be re-read, and maybe even Perec's Life: A User's Manual And for that I like this book even if it is quite silly.

[Hansen Wendlandt · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting idea like this has promise; and there are some gems worth remembering. But overall, the book is a bit of a disappointment. Most of the entries are a stretch to consider ‘words’, and many of the good one-letter words deserve more of a story.

“Just ten words account for 25% of all the words we use, and they all have only one syllable. Fifty words account for 50% of all the words in our speech, and they, too, all have one syllable.” (xvi)
“The A students make professors, the B students make judges, and the C students make money.” (16)
“Until 1882, the letter F (for ‘fray maker’) was branded on the cheeks of people who fought in church.” (55)

[Fábio Fernandes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good reference work for writers and everyone in love with languages; how would I know that you can have so many words with just one letter? Of course, some of the definitions seem very obvious - and, to be honest, there were moments I felt like the author was cheating or making fun of me, due to the redundancy of some of the definitions.

But this was just a fleeting impression; you will be impressed with the variety of sources (from Dickens and Balzac to Hugo and Georges Perec, and that's only in the literary sphere) he uses as examples. I was impressed and convinced. A beautiful, useful book indeed.