Previous Scrabble blog posts featured playable two-letter words beginning with the letters a through e. Today’s entry lists playable two-letter words beginning with f, g, h, i, j, k, and l. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the other two-letter words in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and may increase your score.
- fa: a tone on the diatonic scale
- fe: a Hebrew letter (also feh)
- gi: a white garment worn in martial arts
- go: a Japanese board game
- ha: used to express surprise
- he: a pronoun signifying a male
- hi: an expression of greeting
- hm: used to express consideration
- ho: used to express surprise
- id: the least censored part of the three-part psyche
- if: a possibility
- in: to harvest (a verb, takes -s, -ed, -ing)
- is: the third-person singular present form of “to be”
- it: a neuter pronoun
- jo: a sweetheart
- ka: the spiritual self in ancient Egyptian spirituality
- ki: the vital life force in Chinese spirituality (also qi)
- la: a tone of the diatonic scale
- li: a Chinese unit of distance
- lo: an expression of surprise
It’s all Greek to Me
Since this week finds us in the midst of sorority and fraternity rush, today’s post includes the Greek alphabet. The names of all twenty-four letters are playable words.
- alpha
- beta
- gamma
- delta
- epsilon
- zeta
- eta
- theta
- iota
- kappa
- lambda
- mu
- nu
- xi
- omicron
- pi
- rho
- sigma
- tau
- upsilon
- phi
- chi (also khi)
- psi
- omega
The idiom “it’s all Greek to me,” used to describe anything hard to understand, was popularized by Julius Caesar, in which the character Casca says he didn’t understand a word Cicero spoke (in Greek) at the festival (Shakespeare 1.2).
Thanks to Shakespeare, Greek, sometimes with a lowercase g, is playable in Scrabble as a common noun meaning anything unintelligible.
Next Up
On Monday, after your Scrabble debriefing, we will examine “A Bridge to Words,” which I will distribute today. Read and annotate your copy before Monday’s class. If you were absent today or misplace your copy, print one from Blackboard.
Jane Lucas 