too much typing—since 2003

9.06.2004

sleepy kisses

How is it that certain letters of the alphabet are "cooler" than others? In the names of expensive, fast cars, of fancy electronic gimmicks, and in the call letters of rock radio stations, some letters are more equal than others. In rough order from most to less cool, those letters are X, Z, and maybe Q. So why is that? For one thing, as any Scrabble player knows, they're relatively rare - and thereby less evocative of their humble status as mere letters of the alphabet. Perhaps, in the case of the indubitably cool X and Z, it's that bold angularity, the stark geometry. Except that turn a Z on its side, and you have an N - nothing cool about that. Or about a lower-case t, for that matter. Probably the best answer is that both letters carry a connotation of mystery, a je ne sais quoi: an algebraic unknown, the end of the alphabetic line, something vaguely exotic in both letters. And both are, in a sense, outsiders: Z was an orphan for several hundred years, left behind with the Greeks as the Romans rose and only allowed to rejoin the alphabet in the first century BCE. And X has no real phonetic role, but somehow has hung on despite that lack.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Musing on the origins of the coolness of letters! Alphabetilicious! JeFF, have I told you lately how much I love you?

--Madame X

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the brief vogue enjoyed by "I" and "E" during the dotcom boom (it lives on in iTunes and iPod). Perhaps not cool per se, but they were supposed to denote "futuristic" and "technological."
--Anonymous Sue, who doesn't feel like registering

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
2fs said...

Ooh, that looks scary, doesn't it. A "blog administrator"? Or a "Borg administrator" - or "Vogon administrator." Anyway: per request, I've removed a duplicate response, duplicated due to Blogspot's sometimes wonky interface, which occasionally goes on very brief vacations of ten seconds or so (except someone forwards the mail). And then I made a comment about the duplicate comments which isn't relevant cuz there's no duplicated comments no more, so I de-administrated it as well. I don't know if I can deadministrate the deadministration... (ps: I hate this registration thingy...)

Anonymous said...

I think we can blame lazy science fiction writers, who use X, Z and Q to show that alien languages are, like, hard to pronounce. Don't forget to add random apostrophes. "Quick, we have to get to Zryqon before the X'Thchi blow it to smithereens!"

--Q'Tim

Anonymous said...

"I don't bother washing unless I piss on my hand. Which happens, oh, once a week, tops."

--George Carlin

Anonymous said...

D'oh! Wrong thread! Sorry!

--Abashed