Entertaining E

Origins: praying or calling human figure (1)
Greek: epsilon
Frequency: The most frequent letter in English (2)
"C" from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755): "E is the most frequent vowel in the English language; for it not only is used like the rest in the beginning or end of words, but has the peculiar quality of lengthening the foregoing vowel. Anciently almost every word ended with e; as for can, canne; for year, yeare; for great, greate; for need, neede; for flock, flocke. It is probable that this e final had at first a soft sound and that afterwards it was in poetry either mute or vocal, as the verse required, ’till at last it became universally silent." (3)

Of Interest:
E is the first letter of my name!
But perhaps of more general interest, check out Carol King's "A Alligators All Around", a childhood favorite of mine.

What alphabet books, songs, rhymes did you love as a kid?

Results for C

In a shocking turn of events, we had a tie for the letter C sentence.

Sentence 1: Clara's colorful cookie crumbs completedly covered Connie's comfortable couch cushions, causing Connie considerable consternation.

Sentence 2: Cunning chefs create camouflaged cupcakes causing customer confusion concerning clandestine confections.

According to the official alphAmuse rules, a winning sentence is chosen from the tied sentences by a random process using http://www.random.org/. I asked random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 2. If the number was 1, then Sentence 1 won; if the number was 2, then Sentence 2 won.

The result? 2. Cupcakes for everyone.

(full disclosure, sentence 2 was mine...)

Vote for D

Which sentence should represent the letter D in the alphAmuse book?

A - illustrated!

Remember A? Here it is in full color! (By the way, D is feeling lonely.)

Decanting D

Dilute winter doldrums by dreaming decadent D sentences! First, some D data for you digest.

Origins: fish or door (1)
Greek: delta
Frequency: 10th most frequent letter in English (2)
"D" from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755): "Is a consonant nearly approaching in sound to T, but formed by a stronger appulse of the the tongue to the upper part of the mouth. The sound of D in English is uniform, and it is never mute." (3)

Which sentence should go into the alphAmuse book for the letter "C"?

Best of B

Results are in! The winning B sentence is "Bob's bassoon bellows beautiful ballads but Bertha's bagpipes bewilder bystanders" by Sarah Black.

With so many outstanding choices, I can't help but think that the alphAmuse book will have to come with an appendix listing all the sentences for each letter!

You have until Thursday (tomorrow) night to comment with your C sentences. Voting will begin on Friday. So far the competition includes cheetahs, canines, credit cards, and cupcakes.

Crafting C

A cordial call for C sentences, and a few C considerations to court your creativity.

Origins: possibly an Egyptian staff sling or camel (1)
Greek: gamma
Frequency: 12th most frequent letter in English (2)
"C" from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755): "The third letter of the alphabet, has two sounds; one like k, as, call, clock, craft, coal, companion, cuneiform; the other as s, as, Cæsar, cessation, cinder. It sounds like k before a, o, u, or a consonant; and like s, before e, i, and y." (3)

Of Interest:

C does not appear anywhere in the spelling of the English counting system (one, two, three, etc) (4)

Although C words appear only 6 times on the list of top 200 most commonly used words, they makes up a substantial portion of our grammar vocabulary (clause, comma, colon, conjugation, capitaliz

ation, conjunction). (5)

Tip! Check out this reference for unusual words beginning in each letter of the alphabet: http://phrontistery.info/c.html

Vote for B (+ results for A)

Voting for A is closed and the official winner is: "Alert! Alert! An angry, armored aardvark army approaches!" Congratulations to Abe Gong for his award-winning sentence.

Time to vote for your favorite sentence to represent B.

Which sentence should go into the alphAmuse book for the letter "B"?