Read One-Letter Words, a Dictionary Online
Authors: Craig Conley
Tags: #Social Science, #Popular Culture, #Reference, #General
One-Letter Words, a Dictionary (11 page)
M IN PRINT AND PROVERB
1. (phrase)
To have an M under one’s girdle
means to show courtesy by using the title Mr., Mrs., or Miss.
2. (in literature)
“The letter m in the word
am
means
I;
so that in the expression
I am,
a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained.”
—Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man
3. (in literature)
“M is a mountain or a camp with tents pitched in pairs.”
—Victor Hugo, quoted in
ABZ
by Mel Gooding
4.
n.
In printing, a pica or unit of measure
(“em” space).
5.
n.
A written representation of the letter.
Through one street and the next, until she’d come upon the red M of a Metro station. Descending, she’d purchased, with too large a bill and some difficulty, tokens of what appeared to be luminous plastic, the color of glow-in-the-dark toy skeletons, each with its own iconic M.
—William Gibson,
Pattern Recognition
[The curve of the handwritten line,] galloping like the wind, cutting across itself, soars up to the sky, so that it can start turning into the letter M.
—Peter Esterhazy,
Celestial Harmonies: A Novel
6.
n.
A device, such as a printer’s type, for reproducing the letter.
CLASSIFICATIONS AND DESIGNATIONS
7.
n.
Classification of a rifle,
as in M-1 and M-16.
Do you wonder why that rifle/Is hanging in my den?/You know I rarely take it down/But I touch it now and then./It’s rather slow and heavy/By standards of today/But not too many years ago/It swept
the rest away./It’s held its own in battles/Through snow, or rain, or sun/And I had one just like it,/This treasured old M-1.
—R. A. Gannon, “M-1”
8.
n.
Something arbitrarily designated M
(e.g., a person, place, or other thing).
[In response to a blind taste test conducted by Pepsi, in which people were asked to choose between two products labeled Q and M, the Coca-Cola Company] churned out a bewildering set of statements and commercials aimed at disparaging Pepsi’s results, starting with the claim that people had a psychological preference for the letter M over the letter
Q, unfairly skewing the outcome [in Pepsi’s favor].
Pepsi…hit back immediately with a new set of taste tests using the letters L and S that also detected a preference for Pepsi. Coca-Cola answered that salvo with a faux-comic spot in which people explained why they liked the letter L better than the letter S.
—Frederick L. Allen,
Secret Formula
9.
n.
Someone called M.
[I am psychically picking up on] the letter M. It’s very strong in this room…. You have helped me before; I need your help now, M. M, come to me. I will aid you in your fight against the spirit you oppose.
But you must tell me where to look. Are you trying to reach me, M?—Dark Shadows,
Episode 648
Yet Leonardo must have hoped that…some objective observer would one day seize on the image of this mysterious woman linked with the letter “M” and ask the obvious questions. Who was this “M” and why was she so important?
—Lynn Picknett,
The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ
10.
n.
The thirteenth in a series.
11.
n.
The Millennium Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The M has several spaces for comfy socializing.
—Davey Snyder, quoted in NeilGaiman.com
HEALTH ISSUES
12.
n.
An antigen of human blood responsible for the production of antibodies.
The M antigen, and its antithetical partner, N, were first detected using sera obtained from rabbits immunized with human red cells.
—Immucor
13.
n.
A vitamin (folic acid).
Folic acid is essential to many of the body’s enzyme activities, including the synthesis of protein and the genetic materials RNA and DNA. It also works with vitamin B12 to produce red blood cells. Folic acid may help prevent some cancers, heart disease, and stroke. Adequate intake during pregnancy is crucial, as folic acid appears to protect against some birth defects…. Rich sources of folic acid include vegetables (particularly the dark-green ones); organ meats, whole-wheat products, legumes, and mushrooms.
—American Medical Association
SCIENTIFIC MATTERS
14.
n.
A Roman numeral for 1,000.
15.
n.
With a line above it, a Roman numeral for
1,000,000.
16.
n.
A computer programming language.
M is a procedural, general purpose language with well-developed database handling capabilities….
[It has been theorized that] the choice of a single letter [name] was to get a free ride from the popularity of C, a single letter compiler which is very popular.
—Chris Bonnici
17.
n.
(calculus)
The lower limit of summation.
18.
n.
(astronomy)
A class of red stars.
[F]or red stars like Betelgeuse, we use the letter M.
—Dennis Richard Danielson,
The Book of the Cosmos
CONTRACTION ’M
19.
v.
Am.
I
’m
going.
20.
pronoun.
Him.
Give
’m
the whole story.
21.
n.
Madam.
Yes
’m.
MISCELLANEOUS
22.
n.
Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the consonant M means
“to bring forth, manifesting, matter.”
—Joseph E. Rael,
Tracks of Dancing Light: A Native American
Approach to Understanding Your Name
23.
n.
The thirteenth letter of the alphabet.
“They drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M.”
“Why with an M?” said Alice.
“Why not?” said the March Hare.
—Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland
Big guy, looks…what’s the word. Begins with an M.
—Neil Gaiman,
American Gods
Two massive columns supported a lintel that dipped
in the center to a sharp point, giving the whole monument the shape of a gigantic letter “M.”
—Stan McDaniel,
The Letterseeker
[K]illing some hours by circling in blue ball-point ink every uppercase M in the front section of a month-old
New York Times
.
—Jonathan Franzen,
The Corrections
24.
n.
Something having the shape of an M.
Breakfast time is his time for sitting atop that spherical white buoy…his wings held in the shape of an M.
—William Calvin,
The Cerebral Symphony
The slope was so sheer it hid the M-stone as if it had never existed, and the glare from the sun flashed off the wet surface like a mirror.
—Stan McDaniel,
The Letterseeker
Both orbital rims and brow ridges are oblique in such a way as to describe a stretched-out letter
M above the eyes.
—Stephen Rogers Peck,
Atlas of
Human Anatomy for the Artist
25.
n.
The thirteenth section in a piece of music.
26.
n.
M roof:
a double-peaked roof.
27.
n.
Deep dreamless sleep.
M [of the sacred Hindu syllable AUM] is of Deep
Dreamless Sleep, where (as we say) we have “lost” consciousness, and the mind (as described in the
Indian texts) is “an undifferentiated mass or continuum of consciousness unqualified,” lost in darkness.
—Joseph Campbell,
The Mythic Image
N IN PRINT AND PROVERB
1.
conj.
(informal, sometimes without apostrophe)
And.
Shop
’n
Save
At the corner, he stopped to look in the window of
Bric’n’Brac, a junk shop with sad pretensions.
—Val McDermid,
Wire in the Blood
2.
n.
In printing,
an “en” unit of measure, half the width of an “em.”
3.
n.
A written representation of the letter.
His capital N and the loop of his g swooped like kite’s tails. His t was a dagger thrusting down.
—Poppy Brite,
Lost Souls
On this occasion, FOUAYANG was written as a single word. One A is canted to the left and one to the right, the Y looks like an X, and the legs of the
N undulate gracefully, like a child’s drawing of a wave.
—Anne Fadiman,
The Spirit Catches You and
You Fall Down
4.
n.
A device, such as a printer’s type, for reproducing the letter.
5.
n.
A winner of the Nobel Prize.
One of the N crowd.
—István Hargittai,
The Sydney
Morning Herald,
December 6, 2003.
6. (in literature)
“N is a gate with a diagonal bar.”
—Victor Hugo, quoted in
ABZ
by Mel Gooding
NUMBERS
7.
n.
(mathematics)
an indefinite whole number,
as in the “nth degree.”
I am a man to the nth degree, I swear it.
—Thomas Mann,
The Magic Mountain
Then we deploy that new technique to the nth degree, putting to it every possible question that might apply or be of further research value, until we’ve exhausted the possibilities.
—Candice Pert,
Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine
8.
n.
An infinite number countable only by the godhead.
Man owns three or twenty, or however far he can count, and then comes the archetype of the N and that is in the hands of a godhead.
—Marie-Louise von Franz,
On Divination and
Synchronicity
9.
n.
The fourteenth in a series.
10.
n.
A Roman numeral for 90.
11.
n.
(calculus)
The upper limit of summation.
MISCELLANEOUS
12.
n.
The fourteenth letter of the alphabet.
You are not allowed to ask why Swann has been spelled with two n’s.
—Quentin Crisp,
How to Go to the Movies
Ralph is phoning from “O” while Macy relaxes on
“N.”
—Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman,
Shock
Treatment
Johnny spun to face a bookcase of art criticism and wondered desperately if K came before or after N. The alphabet, a pillar, a solace and a certainty since kindergarten, had suddenly deserted him. He stood, bewildered and staring, as if he’d suffered a crisis of faith. Does the alphabet exist? If the
alphabet exists, why is there so much suffering in the world? The alphabet is dead.
—Cathleen Schine,
The Love Letter
He tried to skip n and go on, but n kept doggedly coming up in his mind, demanding an answer.
—Kevin Kelly (referring to a game of listing, according to the alphabet, each chemical reaction bearing the discoverer’s name),
Out of Control: The
New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the
Economic World
13.
n.
Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the consonant N means “the personal and infinite self.”
—Joseph E. Rael,
Tracks of Dancing Light: A Native American Approach to
Understanding Your Name
14.
n.
Someone called N.
I have known very few prosperous men of letters;
N—represents for me the best and brightest side of literary success.
—George Gissing,
The Private
Papers of Henry Ryecroft
15.
n.
Something having the shape of an N.
We make “Noodle Ns” in my class. I have a volunteer cut out a cardboard lowercase n for each child.
They glue noodles all over it.
—Bridgewater [Massachusetts] Elementary School
16.
n.
Something arbitrarily designated N
(e.g., a person, place, or other thing).
The character N, which Rees says “measures the strength of electrical forces that hold atoms together, divided by the force of gravity between them,” is explained next to the description of a star and a black hole.
—Thomas Harrell, Fox News
17.
n.
The fourteenth section in a piece of music.
18.
n.
The love of God.
[T]he letter N is for the key of his eternal, steadfast love.
—Willis Barnstone, “The Closing Psalm,”
The Other Bible
SCIENTIFIC MATTERS
19.
n.
(biology)
Asparagine,
an amino acid.
20.
n.
(biology)
An antigen of human blood responsible for the production of antibodies.
The M antigen, and its antithetical partner, N, were
first detected using sera obtained from rabbits immunized with human red cells.
—Immucor
21.
n.
(chemistry)
The symbol for the element nitrogen in the periodic table.
22.
n.
(chemistry)
The Avogadro constant
N
equals the number of atoms or molecules contained in a mole,
which is defined as a mass in grams equal to the atomic or molecular weight of a substance.
23.
n.
Index of refraction.
24.
n.
The neutralizing force in the cosmic property of a substance.
When a substance is the conductor of the third or neutralizing force, it is called “nitrogen,” and, like the nitrogen of chemistry, it is designated by the letter N.
—P. D. Uspenskii,
In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching
CONTRACTION ’N
25.
contraction.
In.
Where
’n
the heck is he?
26.
contraction.
Than.
It’s hotter
’n
blazes outside.
FOREIGN MEANINGS
27.
n.
(Spanish)
An unknown person,
as in
El Señor N.