Nuts and Bolts: acrophony.

Acrophony is when the name of a letter begins with the letter itself. For example, the word dee is the name of its own first letter.

It's a great help in remembering which letter is which.

The idea's been around pretty much since there have been letters to name. Proto-Sinaitic emerged from Egyptian hieroglyphs, where the picture of an ox, or 'alp, eventually turned itself upside down and became our capital letter A, also originally called 'alp.

Acrophony has turned out to be such a good idea that it's found all over the place. The Greek letters alpha, beta, gamma, delta, are an obvious example, though not as obvious as our own English a, bee, cee, dee, e...after which it goes a bit haywire, the next letter being, of course, eff, but never mind. French operates on the same principle, but goes off track even earlier, with the letter c being called seh.

Cyrillic and Old Irish, ancient runes, and Thai all use the principle of acrophony - and good for them.

And, do you remember the radio alphabet? Alfa, Bravo, Charlie Delta...

Just think, modern telecommunications systems still rely on the Proto-Sinaitic word for ox.

I told you it was a good idea, didn't I?

Word To Use Today: well, how about alpha?