At WLBOTT, we have a special place in our hearts for four-letter words. But in an effort to expand our horizons, today we investigate English 2-letter words.
Searchable list:
Ew joins another 106 two-letter words, which are aa, ab, ad, ae, ag, ah, ai, al, am, an, ar, as, at, aw, ax, ay, ba, be, bi, bo, by, da, de, do, ed, ef, eh, el, em, en, er, es, et, ex, fa, fe, gi, go, ha, he, hi, hm, ho, id, if, in, is, it, jo, ka, ki, la, li, lo, ma, me, mi, mm, mo, mu, my, na, ne, no, nu, od, oe, of, oh, oi, ok, om, on, op, or, os, ow, ox, oy, pa, pe, pi, po, qi, re, sh, si, so, ta, te, ti, to, uh, um, un, up, us, ut, we, wo, xi, xu, ya, ye, yo, and za. – Merriam-Webster
We reached out to our WLBOTT staff linguist with the question: are these valid English sentences? (Other than a cease-and-desist letter from him, we have as yet received no response.)
Eh? Yo! Me! Ok! Ma! Pa! Or? My! So! Um?
Our Friends Down Under
To our friends Down Under, here are the Australian 2-letter Scrabble-eligible words, with definitions. For example:
AH (verb) to say “Ah” for joy etc
AI a three-toed South American sloth
And in New Zealand
New Zealand also has an active Scrabble community:
Semi-Sequitur: Birnam Woods
The current official selection of the WLBOTT Corporate Book Club™©®℗☮ is Birnam Woods by Eleanor Catton. We are currently at 41% (+/- 0.5%) and are thoroughly enjoying it. Set in New Zealand, the book contains many two letter words. Just to give an example, on page 175 we encounter: “so”, “my”, “to”, “in”, “at”, “he”, “on”, and “no”.
Our favorite scene so far is an angry shouting match over the appropriation of intersectionality* – seriously (or not seriously) this is a total Reductio ad absurdum of the current state of liberalism.
(By the way, ad absurdum is our favorite reductio)
Wonderful, rich characters. Ms Catton takes no prisoners. There are goofy bad guys, dufus bad guys, misguided bad guys, arrogant bad guys, pompous bad guys, selfish egocentric bad guys, and then one really, really, just straight-up bad guy.
A nod to 4-letter words
Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the gypsy café
With a friend of a friend of mine
Who sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she occurred
That love is just a four-letter word
– Bob Dylan / Love is just a Four Letter Word