X is for X #AtoZChallenge #BriFri
Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I talked about the Royal Succession for the letter ‘R’ in the A to Z Challenge. Tina recapped some British shows and movies she’s seen recently. Becky reviewed the first in a four-part narrative telling of British history — The Conquering Family starts with the William the Conqueror and ends with King John. Sim checked out the reviews for the film version of The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (in Britain, because it hasn’t been released in the US yet) and fears that all of us fans are in for a disappointment. Heather reviewed The Corner Shop In Cockleberry Bay, a new book that she found darker than advertised. Speaking of Samuel Johnson (featured in today’s ‘X’ post), Jean shared her thoughts on The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
We’ve reached the rare and wonderful letter ‘X’ in the A to Z Challenge.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, among other literary accomplishments, compiled A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. It was the most commonly used dictionary in Britain until the Oxford English Dictionary came along more than 150 years later and, therefore, had an out-sized impact on how we use words to this day.
Check out the digital edition of A Dictionary of the English Language.
Here is the single line for the section of A Dictionary of the English Language for words beginning with X:
X is a letter, which, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language.
Modern dictionaries have some words that begin with X, like xenophobia and, a word I just learned, its antonym, xenophilia. The OED’s first citation for xenophobia is 1909, so it couldn’t have appeared in Johnson’s dictionary from 1755. Xenophilia still doesn’t have its own entry in the OED — it appears in a list of words that begin with “xeno-” from the Greek for guest or stranger.
How often do you use words beginning with X?