One-Letter Words, a Dictionary by Craig Conley

illustrates how after a currency falls in value, the trade deficit grows first before shrinking. It can also look like a reversed J, similar to a hyperbola, and is referred to in biology as representing a typical distribution of species in an area, with a few numerous species, and many species with just a few representatives.”—Dr. John Burkardt
     
     
    THE HEAT IS ON
    16. n. (radiometry) Radiant intensity, or the flux from a point on a light source that is radiated into a unit solid angle.
     
    17. n. (thermodynamics) Mechanical equivalent of heat, which is the energy of motion tied up in the ceaseless motion of the atoms in all substances.
     
     
    MISCELLANEOUS
    18. n. Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the consonant J means “sight, seeing, vision.” —Joseph E. Rael, Tracks of Dancing Light: A Native American Approach to Understanding Your Name
     
    19. n. The tenth letter of the alphabet.
He checked the mechanism. He stooped and typed C. The letter J lit up. He typed L and got a U. A, I, R and E yielded, successively, X, P, Q, and Q again. —Robert Harris, referring to the infamous Nazi Enigma code in his novel Enigma
     
    20. n. The tenth section in a piece of music.
     
    21. n. J bag: a golf bag used for carrying clubs.
     
    22. n. J stik: a joystick used in video game machines which allows for fast motions.
     
     
    FOREIGN MEANINGS
    23. n. (French) Zero, as in le jour J, “zero day.”
     
     
    FACTS AND FIGURES
    24. In Medieval Latin, the letter J developed as a form of I, and both were used interchangeably. Under the influence of French, J became a separate sign with its own phonetic value.
     
     

 
    K IN PRINT AND PROVERB
    1. (in literature) The protagonist in Franz Kafka’s works The Trial and The Castle.
     
    2. (in literature) Prince K is Razumov’s mysterious benefactor (and unacknowledged father) in Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.
     
    3. (in literature) Author David James Duncan offers a list of his own definitions for K in his novel The Brothers K:
2. to fail, to flunk, to fuck up, to fizzle, or 3. to fall short, fall apart, fall flat, fall by the wayside, or on deaf ears, or hand times, or into disrepute or disrepair, or 4. to come unglued, come to grief, come to blows, come to nothing, or 5. go to the dogs, go through the roof, go home in a casket, go to hell in a hand basket, or 6. to blow your cover, blow your chances, blow your cool, blow your stack, shoot your wad, bitch the deal, buy the farm, bite the dust, only 7. to recollect an oddball notion you first heard as a crimeless and un-K’ed child but found so nonsensically paradoxical that you had to ignore it or defy it or betray it for decades before you could begin to believe that it might possibly be true, which is that 8. to lose your money, your virginity, your teeth, health or hair, 9. to lose your home, your innocence, your balance, your friends, 10. to lose your happiness, your hopes, your leisure, your looks, and yea, even your memories, your vision, your mind, your way, 11. in short (and as Jesus K. Rist once so uncompromisingly put it) to lose your very self, 12. for the sake of another, is 13. sweet irony, the only way you’re ever going to save it. —David James Duncan, The Brothers K
     
    4. (in literature) A misplaced letter of foreboding in Cathleen Schine’s Love Letter:
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.
     
    5. (in film) The name of an atoll that shipwrecks the comedians Laurel and Hardy in the 1951 film Atoll K.
     
    6. (in literature) “K” is the title of a poem by Erin Belieu, anthologized in the 2000 book One Above and