It's a fascinating letter. For starters, it always must be followed by another letter. It's contingent letter. Parasitic. A letter who's existence is permissible only by the inclusion of another letter. That's fascinating. Sure, there are words with q without u. But a cursory look shows that they are either obsolete spellings or foreign words taken a slight hold in the English language. Negligible at best.
It does have some proper function. There's the disputed Q document. Also, my favorite Star Trek character went by Q.
Q represents an interesting conundrum. Could it exist without U? Can humanity survive? Will we function without a U? We work well with silent letters. We work well with c sounding like k; g sounding like j. I think we could maintain our morality if we took away the U. But I am not a philologist. It's not up to me. Life will go on as it always has: with the U next to the Q.
Some of my favorite Q words in order:
1. Quixotic -- How often to you get and x and q in the same word. Not often. Plus it looks like it means. How often do you get that.
2. Quotidian -- Another word with an odd look about it. Ironic in it's meaning with relation to it's appearance.
3. Quantum -- The double U. It's a sleek looking work. Sounds great too.
4. Quasi -- Looks odd. Lots of vowels. And it sounds like there's a z in there. There's not. But it seems like there should be.
5. Quagmire -- Sounds thick. Heavy to say. Not too tough on the eyes though.
Honorable Mention:
Querulous -- Triple U!!! More vowels than we can count. How can we complain about this word?
7 comments:
I'm suprised "queue" didn't make your list. Here's a word that has four unnecessary vowels in a row. If you take away four-fifths of the word, you have a homophone. Crazy!
You're right. I left that out despite my enthrallment with vowels. However, it's a rather dull word.
Though I do like the fact that it has all those vowels. I like the word eerie too.
And can't we make Q a vowel. I mean, we have "sometimes Y". If it always needs a vowel it should be a vowel. My vote for president: the next man or woman who makes this happen.
I could be wrong here (and I challenge someone to think of a word to prove me wrong), but I can't think of a word that has the letters "qu" in it without containing another vowel. Thus the "u" in "qu" is not adequate enough to serve as the vowel of a word, it needs another. Therefore, I propose that just as "y" is sometimes a vowel, "u" is sometimes not a vowel.
Your whole post takes me back to "White Men Can't Jump" w/Rosie Perez. Therefore a favorite Jeopardy category.
Arica :)
I am surprised that Aaron forgot to give an honorable mention to a Red Sox player called, 'The 'Q' man, or, simply 'The Q'. Played for them in the 90's, was pretty good hitter and first baseman. Ended up on the wrong side of the law.
Carlos Quintana!!!! How could I forget him.
For Eric' query,
http://www.morewords.com/contains/squ/
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