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Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Nuts and Bolts: on the double.

Is it possible to make a list of twenty six words, each one  containing a different doubled letter of the alphabet?

(It was the lovely word screwworm that started me wondering.)

Well, let's see:

Aardvark, bobble, tobacco, waddle, dweeb, faff, gaggle, withhold, skiing, j (hm, I'll have to research that one) bookkeeping, loll, mummer, cunning, loon, popper, q (something Arabic?), barrage, rattle, vacuum, screwworm, x (someone must have made one up at some point, surely) y (um....), huzzah!

So, how about j, q, x and y? Well, apparently English has avijjā, huqqa and cubbyyew.

Avijjā is a Buddhist term for ignorance; a huqqa is an alternative spelling for a hookah; and a cubbyyew is a large sea fish, Elacate canada.

As far as I can discover from Those Who Know, though, there's no genuine double x word in English. Which is sad.

Never mind. I send this list to you with all best wishes, anyway,

xx

Sally

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