Recently I wrote about the word a, some features of which fascinate me.
One point I neglected to mention: Alphabetically, it’s the very first single-letter word in English.
Which raises a question. (I still can’t bring myself to say “begs a question”, even though descriptive lexicons now sanction this usage.)
Said question is, how many one-letter words does English have, and what are they? (Okay — technically those are two questions.)
Turns out, the answer depends on whether we allow words that refer to themselves. For example, every letter is its own name, as when we say there are two e’s in the word “there”, but only one r.
In that sentence, “e” functions as our word for the alphabet’s fifth letter; “r” is our word for its 18th. Each letter is thus its own word for itself.
But this is too easy! It’s almost cheating. Of course every letter is its own name. Let’s agree to exclude these “self-referential” words, and focus instead on “real” words — words that refer to something other than the word (or letter) itself.
With that restriction, there are at least three: A, I, and O.
(1) A, as we discussed before, is an indefinite article.
(2) I is a first-person-singular pronoun.
(3) O is an interjection — specifically, a shortened form of “oh”.
This last word — O — also is used as a form of address, as in “O King!” or “O My God!” (I suppose it remains an interjection in that context.)
If there are any more one-letter words in English, I can’t think of them. Nor did any turn up in the quick web-search I did.
But that doesn’t really prove more don’t exist. If you know of any, please tell me in a comment.
(This article is part of my series on words that are #worth1000pictures.)
6 responses to “Three Little Words: A, I, O”
Well G, that really got the morning going. Though technically G is Gee.
Recently “k” has come to be used in conversation (and texting) as an acknowledgement, as in a shortened form of “ok”.
Will the future bring R as are and U as you ?
Many thanks, Verne — Peter — Janelle — for these great suggestions as to other single-letter words. They all have merit. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet!
My tentative impression is that all of these examples constitute, for the moment, abbreviations rather than whole words. And it’s whole words I had in mind. Or what we might call “real” words. (Although some might argue that an abbreviation is a real word. Isn’t that an arbitrary distinction?)
Combining your entries, one might transmit a phone text-message asking “G R U K?” (meaning “gee, are you okay?”) It’s not uncommon, in texting, for folks to write stuff like “I C U” (I see you) or “R U N?” (are you in?) In texting people use “B” for “be” or “v” for “very”.
Out of all these, I would estimate that “K” (for okay) comes the closest — so far — to having evolved into a “real word”. Give them all a few more years and it’s possible that any or all of them could be considered words. But as I say above, I don’t think we’re quite there yet! (And I could easily be mistaken…)
You could catch some z’s but I’ve never heard of anyone catching a single z.
Linda, that’s brilliant. Notwithstanding your disclaimer, I was prepared, at least for a minute, to argue that you had located another single-letter word (and the first one-letter consonant word).
But after prolonged web-searching, studying Wiktionary and a bunch of other lexical sites, I’ve realized there’s no singular form of “z’s”. It seems to exist only as a mock-plural form. Could find no example of a singular usage.
I wondered whether it might be possible to use this as an adjective: “Gonna catch me some z action” — meaning, I’ll grab the opportunity for a quick nap. But I can’t find any precedent on the web for such usage. So I guess it doesn’t quite rise to the level of a word.
Still a brilliant suggestion, though!