N, n November, The Alphabet Project

N, n: From the Canaanite nun “fish.” Between the waterfall, mem, and the fish, nun, leaping up like a lightning-bolt, comes the alphabet’s midpoint, dividing the most common letters, placed within easy reach, from the least common, shoved against the back wall. A typical dictionary devotes a hundred pages on Aardvark to azygous, whereas we can get all the way from xanthate to Zyrian in less than ten.

nonce word: A word coined for a single occasion and never used again. One might reasonably ask if such a thing can even exist. For example, if someone made up the word gulk to mean “I cannot believe what I am hearing,” could this properly be considered a word at all if it were never repeated? And once spoken, if it were printed in a dictionary somewhere as an example of a nonce word, wouldn’t it cease to be one?

Coming November 30th, the RETURN OF THE STOOPID CONTEST