What can I come up with for X? X-ray, Xanadu, X chromosome, xebec (that’s a 3-masted sailing ship), xylem, Xena… My dictionary devotes barely a page and a third to X words. I have some Xanax in my medicine closet. I use it occasionally to help me sleep when ideas start bouncing around in my head.
When I was teaching math, X was very important. We were always looking for X. Usually I had to know Y to find X. (Yeah, bad joke.)
When editing, I’ve been known to X out an entire paragraph or (gasp) page.
Oh, and there was the X Files. I really enjoyed that show.
I’ve learned when writing a draft, if I can’t think of the right word, or if I’ve forgotten a minor character’s name (or if I haven’t come up with a name for the character), that it’s a waste of time to go through the thesaurus or early books where that character appeared. I simply type XXX in the spot where the unknown word will be placed and go on writing. (What do I do if I have more than one unknown? YYY or ZZZ keep those places until I come back.) Once I’m finished with the complete draft of the story, I can look up the word I couldn’t think of earlier (or the name) and do a find and replace for the XXXs (or YYYs or ZZZs) and the computer will insert the correct word.
And that’s about all I can say about X. A-to-Z Blogging Challenge
Great Job, Maris….X was difficult but fun too. I didn’t realize how few words there are for X until I did this little exercise. Prompted me to ask why we have it. Guess we can’t get away from the Greeks when it comes to letters…..
See you tomorrow…online, that is.
Wil, being a former math teacher, I couldn’t go along with your idea of eliminating X, but I enjoyed the alternative spellings you came up with if we were to drop X from the alphabet.