One-Letter Words, a Dictionary (14 page)

Q IN PRINT AND PROVERB

1. (Biblical criticism)
Material common to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that was not derived from the Gospel of Mark.

2. (phrase)
Q in a corner:
an old children’s game.

3. (phrase)
In a merry Q:
to be in a good temper.

4.
n.
Behavior,
as in “mind your p’s and q’s.”

5. (in literature)
As an evil letter:
“Evil Letter Q lacks the quintessential letter power: the ability to stand alone. While not lonely floating about in Iraq and
Qatar, Q retains complete dependence on the otherwise mundane U, temptress vowel of the ages. Q, making the distinctive “KW” sound in nearly all walks of life—excluding, of course, ghetto, which retains little to no sense of phonetic logic—can logically be represented with two other letters, K and
W, in that very order!”
—Eric Goulding

6. (in literature)
As a high level of thought, reached via the near-genius ability to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order:
“It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is arranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one,
firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q…. But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could
reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q.
He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q—R—Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn, and proceeded. ‘Then R…’ He braced himself. He clenched himself.”
—Virginia Woolf,
To the Lighthouse

7. (in literature)
As a letter that should be thrown into a privet bush:
“He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn’t stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away. During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on
Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter
Q into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.
—Douglas Adams,
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

8. (in literature)
“Q is a rump with a tail.”
—Victor Hugo, quoted in
ABZ
by Mel Gooding

9.
n.
A written representation of the letter.
She had invented her own Q in kindergarten after
Miss Binney, the teacher, had told the class the letter
Q had a tail. Why stop there? Ramona had thought.
—Beverly Cleary,
Ramona the Brave,
referring to a Q drawn with ears and whiskers in addition to a tail.
[I]t may be easier to make something of nothing than nothing of something. Perceptual psychologist Ann
Treisman, of UC Berkeley, found that people shown a
field of identical letter Q’s with a simple O hidden in the middle did not see the O. The brain probably added the
“tail” necessary to turn the O into a Q. And yet, people shown a field of O’s had no problem finding a solitary Q. Finding the presence, in other words, was easy; but
finding an absence was impossible for most people—even though the two situations were in all respects mirror images, entirely complementary.
—K. C. Cole,
The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything

10.
n.
A device, such as a printer’s type, for reproducing the letter.

11.
n.
An abbreviation for “cue,”
as written in play scripts to signal an actor to begin.

SEASICK

12.
n.
A boat,
as in the armed Q-boat which is disguised as a fishing ship and used to decoy enemy submarines into gun range.

13.
n.
A fever like typhus,
caused by a microorganism transmitted by raw milk or by ticks.

RATIOS AND AMOUNTS

14.
n.
(chiefly obsolete monetary unit)
Half-a-farthing.

15.
n.
A medieval Roman numeral for 500.

16.
n.
The ratio of the reactance to the resistance of an oscillatory circuit.

17.
n.
The seventeenth in a series.

MISCELLANEOUS

18.
n.
Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the consonant Q means “initiation, eternal quest.”
—Joseph E. Rael,
Tracks of Dancing Light: A Native American Approach to
Understanding Your Name

19.
n.
The seventeenth letter of the alphabet.
Q is a letter we might very well spare in our Alphabet, if we would but use the serviceable K as he should be.
—Ben Jonson,
Grammar
The two of them had gone head-to-head for an hour now, and all he had left were the letters X and Q and there was nowhere on the Scrabble board to put them.
—Susan Donovan,
Take a Chance on Me

20.
n.
Something arbitrarily designated Q
(e.g., a person, place, or other thing).
Books you were going to write with letters for titles.
Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but
W is wonderful. O yes, W.
—James Joyce,
Ulysses

21.
n.
Something having the shape of a Q.
Generally, the stars that we can see look like a ball or maybe a disk. However, with high-resolving powerful telescopes like the Keck I in Hawaii, it may be possible to view more unusually-shaped stars deep in space. [The Wolf-Rayet 104 star] has a shape similar to the letter “Q.” This Q-shaped star…is located in the direction of the Sagittarius asterism, about 4,800 light-years (1 light-year is approximately 5 trillion 900 billion miles or 9 trillion 460 billion kilometers) away from the Earth, and therefore looks like a vague image through common telescopes.—World Space News
“Spare me, Oscar,” she interjected, contorting herself into the letter Q.
—Bill Richardson,
Waiting for Gertrude: A Graveyard Gothic

22.
n.
The seventeenth section in a piece of music.
We can’t work so much on detail we forget to put the whole passage in context. It’s what I call the Letter
Q Syndrome. We work so hard on letter Q, starting every rehearsal at that spot…. After the ninety-
seventh time at Q, “Let’s start at our favorite spot, letter Q.” But the night of the concert, if we don’t guard against this syndrome, where is the problem? It isn’t letter Q; it is the few measures before Q. They know Q better than the back of their hands; they just don’t know how to get Q in context.
—Peter Loel,
Boonshaft, Teaching Music with Passion: Conducting, Rehearsing and Inspiring
Against this background, the woodwind/brass motives (from letter Q) comprise three statements, sequential in pitch but also in time (since they involve a regular pulse), built to cumulative effect.
—Timothy L. Jackson,
Sibelius Studies

SCIENTIFIC MATTERS

23.
n.
(thermodynamics)
Heat,
or the energy flow from one object to another as a result of a temperature difference.

24.
n.
(biochemistry)
The amino acid glutamine.
Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid (protein building block) in the body and is involved in more metabolic processes than any other amino acid. Glutamine is converted to glucose when more glucose is required by the body as an energy source.
It serves as a source of fuel for cells lining the intestines. Without it, these cells waste away. It’s
also used by white blood cells and is important for immune function…. Glutamine is found in many foods high in protein, such as fish, meat, beans, and dairy.
—Mother Nature Health Encyclopedia

25.
n.
(in logic)
a symbol used to represent an arbitrary proposition.
P, q, and r were used as propositional letters by
Bertrand Russell in 1903 in
The Principles of Mathematics.—Jeff Miller, “Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols”

26.
n.
(in mathematics)
A matrix with special properties.
The Q is a matrix whose columns are orthonormal vectors.
—Marie A. Vitulli, “A Brief History of Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory”

27.
n.
(medicine)
Q sign:
the state of having one’s mouth open and tongue protruding, coined by emergency room doctors.
Looks like Mr. O’Reilly’s not going to need his sleeping pills tonight—he’s already got a positive Q sign showing.
—Sheilendr Khipple, “What’s a Bed Plug? An LOL in NAD”