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Anagrams - Solved
In class we've been looking at anagrams, and challenging ourselves to create new words from jumbled letters. If you'd like to continue exploring anagrams at home, or want to share your discoveries with your parents, you may find the following website fun.

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Project Idea
Create our very own re-designed (bamboo?) Scrabble game by investigating the most commonly used letters in English. How many of each letter should we include in the set? How will we determine how many points each letter should be worth? What 7 letter English word will achieve the highest possible score?

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Investigation
A Countdown/Scrabble conundrum -
F asked: Is 'q' followed by 'u' in all English words?
The answer lies in etymology. Read on ...

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The letter Q is almost always followed by a U in English, but that isn't always the case.

Scrabble players tend to struggle with words using a Q, but experienced players know they don't need a U to follow it.

There are a handful of words that English borrowed from other languages that flout that rule, like burqa, qat, and qabbalah.

Some things make perfect pairs.

Macaroni and cheese. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Hall and Oates.

The same can be said for two letters of the English alphabet: Q and U. Anyone who's taken a spelling class probably remembers their teacher telling them that in English, the Q must always be followed by a U.

Well, it turns out that's not exactly true. In reality, there are dozens of words in English that have a Q that isn't followed by a U. And no one knows this better than Scrabble players.

Many of those words are borrowed from other languages. Arabic and Hebrew are two especially common sources, as in English the Q is often used to represent the more guttural "K" sound that appears in those languages. We can thank those languages for giving us words like "burqa," a full-body garment worn by some Muslim women, and "sheqel," the currency of Israel.

But Q-without-U words come all from all over the globe, from Mandarin to Inuit to Zulu. A couple of them are even "homegrown" English words with a modern twist. They're all in the English dictionary, and therefore allowed in Scrabble.

Here's a sample of the English words in which the Q stands alone.

Burqa

Language of origin: Arabic

A burqa is a long, loose garment that covers the face and body and is worn by some Muslim women.

Mbaqanga

Language of origin: Zulu

Mbaqanga is a style of music from South Africa that was popular in the 1960s. It combines elements of traditional music with jazz and big band.

Niqab

Language of origin: Arabic

A niqab is a veil worn by some Muslim women that covers the hair and the face except for the eyes.

Qabbala

source

David Silberman/Getty Images

Language of origin: Hebrew

Qabbala is a body of ancient, mystical Jewish teachings. It's often spelled kabbalah, kabbala, cabala, and a few other ways.

Qajaq

Language of origin: Greenlandic

Qajaq is simply another way to spell kayak, a small boat similar to a canoe. Qajaq is a more authentic representation of the original word, according to a former editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

Qat

Language of origin: Arabic

Qat, or khat, is a flowering plant that grows in the Middle East and Africa. Qat leaves are chewed as a stimulating drug similar in effect to a strong cup of coffee, and consumption of it is illegal in some countries.

Qi

Language of origin: Mandarin

In Qi, pronounced "chee," is defined as "the circulating life force whose existence and properties are the basis of much Chinese philosophy and medicine."

Qintar

Language of origin: Albanian

A qintar is a monetary unit of Albania. It used to be a subdivision of the Albanian lek, similar to a cents in the United States, but it is no longer circulated.

Qiviut

source

US Fish and Wildlife Service/Getty Images

Language of origin: Inuit

Qiviut is the wool of the undercoat of the musk ox, and is commonly used to make sweaters and scarves.

Qwerty

source

Shutterstock/Paolo De Gasperis

Language of origin: N/A

Qwerty refers to the standard layout for computer keyboards used in English-speaking countries. It's not hard to see how the keyboard got its name - it's taken from the first six letters on the top row of the keyboard. Odds are you're probably staring at a qwerty keyboard right now.

Sheqel

Language of origin: Hebrew

A sheqel or shekel is the basic monetary unit of Israel. It came into English thanks to the Hebrew Bible, and originally referred to a unit of weight.

Suq

Language of origin: Arabic

A suq or souk is a bazaar, or a marketplace found throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Tranq

Language of origin: English

A tranq is an informal word for tranquilizer, a drug used to reduce anxiety and tension. Also spelled trank, it's been used in English since at least 1967, according to Merriam-Webster.

Umiaq

source

University of Saskatchewan

Language of origin: Inuit

An umiaq or umiak is an open boat made of a wooden frame and covered with hide. It's used mainly by indigenous people in the Arctic, including Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia.

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Mark Abadi, Business Insider US

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Some of the most valuable words in Scrabble use a Q without a U, and there are many more than your English teacher led you to believe

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Business Insider - The letter Q is almost always followed by a U in English, but that isn't always the case. In fact, one of the exceptions is a word you see on your computer keyboard every day - and it's a great one to remember for Scrabble..

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Investigation
What's a homophone?
How does it differ from a homograph or a homonym?
How can knowing the difference help you in your writing and communication?
You might find the resource below a useful place to start.

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Investigation
What is an acronym?
What's special about the word scuba?
What other words acronyms do you know?
Is there an object, idea or expression you use in your life that you believe could be better captured by an acronym? Why not create and share one of your own? You never know, it may catch on.

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Words are made up of letters, but a group of letters doesn't necessarily become a word. Think of FBI or HMO or TSA or TGIF-perfectly common expressions that we encounter every day, but no one would call them words. They are commonly called acronyms, but there's a more specific term that's used by linguists and people who like being precise about these things: initialism.

The confusion starts when we pronounce the letters of these abbreviations like a word, like NATO. The definition of , "a word formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term," means that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations because they are pronounceable as words. Some acronyms are spoken so frequently that we begin to think of them as words, like radar (radio detection and ranging), scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), and laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Other common acronyms are ASCII, UNICEF, DARPA, and the governmental terms .

An initialism is an abbreviation formed from initial letters. Our online dictionary has entries for some 1500 abbreviations that use only capital letters, like ACLU, BBQ, CPR, DIY, POV, PTSD, and YMCA. Acronym is a relatively new word made up of ancient parts. It entered the language around 1940, made from the Greek word akros, meaning "topmost" or "highest," combined with -onym, from the Greek word onyma ("name" or "word"). In German, the term Akronym had been used since the 1920s.

Initialism is the older term, dating to the mid-1800s.

Some initialisms become acronyms by virtue of being spoken out loud frequently enough to become more like a word than a set of letters: both ASAP and LOL are frequently pronounced as words. Some are only partially pronounced, like HVAC.

Acronyms formed from the first parts of words (rather than just the initial letters) tend to become words themselves, like hazmat (hazardous materials) and motel (motor hotel). These are sometimes called blends by linguists, and arguments about whether the new word was formed from initial letters or blended word parts enter the realm of the philosophical.

Finally, some words are formed from spelling out or rendering pronounceable their initials, like emcee (MC) and seabee (construction battalion).

Because it's frequently used to mean both kinds of abbreviations, a second definition of ​ acronym​ reads, "​ also​ : an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters." Which is a synonym of ​ initialism ​, FYI.

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The difference between acronyms and initialisms.