Thursday, January 13, 2011

start at the very beginning: A

This week's featured letter is A. I've put together some facts about A. Enjoy, and then use the comments section to post a sentence made of words that all begin with the letter A. Sound daunting? Just try it out - it's actually pretty fun, and comments can be anonymous.


All About A

Origins
: pictogram of an Ox head (1)
Greek: alpha
Frequency: 3rd most frequent letter in English (2)
"A" from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755): "The first letter of the European alphabets, has, in the English language, three different sounds, which may be termed the broad, open, and slender." (Broad = all, wall; Open: father, rather; slender: place, face) (3)

Of Interest:The words abstemious and arsenious contain all the vowels in the correct order. (4)

A study published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology in March 2010 found that when students see the letter "A" before a test they may perform better than when they see the letter "F" or a neutral letter "J". (5)

5 comments:

Erin Gong said...

Angelic Asteroids Accelerated Ardently.

Anonymous said...

Ambidextrous Apes Ate Apricots Assiduously.

Erin Gong said...

Arrogant Academics Articulate Arguments Alone.

Abe said...

Alert! Alert! An angry, armored aardvark army approaches!

Abe said...

Absent any agreeable alternatives, Alvin accordingly asked about acquiescing and abdicating.