# Are those convenient little words in Scrabble REALLY words? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 7, 2001, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027 "2001-11-07T18:05:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/1 "2001-11-07T18:05:22Z")
I recently bought Mr. Athena a Scrabble game. The Deluxe version, no less. Do I love him or what? Last night we played for the first time. My mother was a big Scrabble fan, and I remember watching her play. I also remember many of the nifty little words that show up in the Scrabble dictionary that make life so much easier. Words like “Ba” and “Hm” and “Sh”. The [Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary](http://www.logophilia.com/scrabble/) lists LOTS of these. No definitions, though. Last night when I tried to use “Ba” Mr. Athena told me that was CHEATING. We looked it up at the above url, and sure enough, it says it’s real. However, when I try to find a definition, about the closest I can come to a “real word” is that, IIRC, it’s the chemical symbol for Barium. Symbols are allowed in Scrabble? Abbreviations aren’t. A lot of the other words get listed in the dictionary as archaic. Some others, like UN, are simply prefixes, which the Scrabble rules specifically say are not allowed. Mr. Athena thinks it’s blatent cheating. I’ve always played with such “words” allowed, as long as they were in the Scrabble dictionary. I also think the game would be much harder if such words were not allowed. How do YOU play Scrabble? Has the Scrabble Dictionary bent the rules to make the game more playable? What in God’s Hallowed Name does UN mean, if it’s not a prefix or abbreviations? ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/2 "2001-11-07T18:29:17Z")
> **[Definition of un | Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/un)** > > Definition of un from Dictionary.com, the world’s leading online source for English definitions, pronunciations, word origins, idioms, Word of the Day, and more. (scroll down most of the page, until you get to the uncapitalized, un-hyphenated ‘un’). Pretty weak, but I guess it’s a word whose etymology is U.N., that means an organization of states. [http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=ba](http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=ba) A few uncapitalized, un-punctuated 'ba’s, including (archaic) ‘to kiss.’ ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/3 "2001-11-07T18:39:21Z")
Abbreviations, chemical symbols, and interjections like “hm” and “sh” weren’t allowed when my family played Scrabble. (And my parents played it for blood.) I remember we turned up “em” and “en” as legitimate words (units of measure used in printing, if you didn’t know); there was some grumbling over whether they should be disallowed anyway, as they “made it too easy”. I don’t know how I grew up as normal as I did… ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/4 "2001-11-07T18:45:02Z")
Mr. Athena claims I misrepresent him. Here’s his statement: * * * Rather than calling it “cheating”, I’d say that it’s some of cheating, and a lot of just bending the basic tenents of the game to “make it work”. More than that, I find those idiotic 2-letter “words” to be an intellectual affront to my basic idea of consistency and fairness and good design. They’re like some kind of “magic” code that’s buried down deep in a big OO software system, that had to be put there to make the wonderful rest-of-the-system work. It’s like a big ding in the fender of a '56 Corvette, that the owner trys to tell me is “no big deal”. Or like a big spot on a telescope mirror that the manufacturer says “has no appreciable effect on viewing”. It’s contrariness in the face of clear rules and an elegant design. It exists when it could be avoided. It’s a cave-in to the last part of hard work that might have been needed to achieve completeness, or possibly perfection. It’s looking the other way when we know deep-down that we shouldn’t. ## It bugs me. ---
**Author:** ![Mystery\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f14d63/32.png) [@Mystery\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mystery_Dog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/5 "2001-11-07T18:47:21Z")
I have here by my desk a copy of the book _Everything Scrabble_, by Joe Edley (past winner of the National Scrabble championship) and John D. Williams, Jr (executive director of the National Scrabble Association). The book lists all 94 two-letter words from the Scrabble Dictionary, with definitions. According to this book, “un” means “one”, and “ba” means “the eternal soul in Egyptian mythology”. According to [a review of The Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary on Amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0877799156/ref=pd_sim_books/107-4410358-1386157), the dictionary is compiled from ten other dictionaries. So some other dictionary out there gives these definitions for these words. ---
**Author:** ![tarragon918](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@tarragon918](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tarragon918)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/6 "2001-11-07T18:53:25Z")
Does anyone know what QAT means?! LOL I haven’t yet found a dictionary which lists this word; it’s acceptable in Scrabble, yet unacceptable in Scrabble Blitz! Why is that?! Whew, it does feel good to get that off my chest so to speak. Back to the original topic, I’ve never understood why -some- two letter words are allowable yet others are not! But I do think that the two-letter words were made playable or else the game would be too hard. Unfortunately. ~~tarragon~~ ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/7 "2001-11-07T18:55:45Z")
Here’s what we use for games like this: If I say it, and you understand what I mean, it’s a word. That’s what words _are_. Sounds people make which convey specific meaning. So if I say “ba” and I’ve got “ba” down on the board, and you say, “… the hell? that’s not a word!”, then I have to pick my puny little letter back up off the board and use my damned brain to come up with a real word. Now, this does mean that you’ll see words on our Scrabble board like “Jenny” (proper noun not allowed by most people), “radar” (acronym, also not allowed), and “gafia” (fanspeak, a definite no-no). ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/8 "2001-11-07T19:14:05Z")
_jenny_ is fine because it means a female bird or female donkey. The name appears to be derived from the proper noun, but it is a regular word now. I would say _radar_ and _scuba_ are acceptable because they have become accepted words. Note they are all in lowercase in the dictionaries, I’m not sure if that matters or not. I looked up _ASAP_ and it lists it as an abbreviation, not a noun like radar and scuba. Never heard of _gafia_, not in [http://www.m-w.com](http://www.m-w.com) either, so I guess it doesn’t count yet. But if it became acceptable as common usage, then it would count. In my Scrabble group we have a bunch of words that show up in the dictionary that we use, such as aa, jo, oo, and all the spellings of the letters (el, em, en, ess, ef) and the Greek and Hebrew letters as well. All that matters IMO is that you agree to the rules beforehand, whatever they are. We love 2 letter words, it makes for a much higher scoring game and more word placement opportunities. It also rewards the better players. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/9 "2001-11-07T19:25:59Z")
For the record, aa is a type of lava. I seem to remember a list of 17(?) 2 letter words in my ex’s Scrabble rules that were permitted. Do they even list abbreviations and symbols in the official Scrabble dictionary? ---
**Author:** ![RoboDude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bbe5ce/32.png) [@RoboDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RoboDude)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/10 "2001-11-07T19:53:23Z")
> [@](#): > > According to this book, “un” means “one”, and “ba” means “the eternal soul in Egyptian mythology”. I don’t recall words in foreign languages being allowed. ---
**Author:** ![snermy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@snermy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snermy)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/11 "2001-11-07T21:11:18Z")
I want to agree with **Mr.Athena**. But that’s probably cause we’ve always played with a standard dictionary. Unless you’re hauling around the Complete Oxford, the most archaic and questionable words (in the sense that _no one ever uses them. ever._) will be left out. So I do feel it’s somehow wrong to use a dictionary that’s not designed to be, well, a dictionary in the sense that it is intended to be a collection of the vocabulary of a particular time and place. The Scrabble dictionary is, uh, very _casual_ on that point. If it’s short, it’s [in](http://www.scrabble.org.au/words/twos.htm). But by the actual [rules](http://www.hasbroscrabble.com/default.asp?x=rules1) allowing archaic and foreign origin words that argument’s out. (And at what point does a word go from “foreign word” to “word of foreign origin”? That’s where the dictionary comes in. And if the dictionary writers are not pure of heart?!? Well, you get the scrabble dictionary… 😉 Methinks it behooves **Mr.Athena** to hie himself to thy dictiory and learn thy Scrabblish cant. But to each his own gust. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/12 "2001-11-07T21:21:57Z")
Well, I know two guys who LOVE Scrabble. They play it against each other at least once a day (usually after a Trivial Pursuit match.) They play for money! Usually only a nickel a point, but sometimes they are double-or-nothing grudge matches, THOSE are nasty! Do NOT interfere with their games. Anyways, they are as hardcore as hardcore gets, and they go by the Official Scrabble Dictionary. If it’s in THAT dictionary, it counts, it it ain’t, too damn bad. That’s how ‘Official’ Scrabble is played, so that’s how they play it. So to them, ‘ba’, ‘sh’, and ‘un’ are allowable if they are in the Scrabble Dictionary (which I think they are.) ---
**Author:** ![Mystery\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f14d63/32.png) [@Mystery\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mystery_Dog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/13 "2001-11-07T21:30:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RoboDude \* > \*\*I don’t recall words in foreign languages being allowed. \*\* Foreign words aren’t allowed. The presence of these words in the Scrabble dictionary means that some English-language dictionary somewhere declared these words to have been adopted into English. We can debate whether this was a good decision, but the Scrabble gods have spoken. In fact, the word “da” was formerly considered an acceptable Scrabble word, as part of proper names like da Vinci, until someone wised up and realized that it’s a foreign word that has most definitely not been borrowed into English. Inexplicably, the nearly identical word “de” is still valid. More information about the controversies over what is and isn’t acceptable in Scrabble can be found [here](http://www.jimgeary.com/scrab/letters/BRIEFHIS.HTM) and [here](http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/news/pr/2000/pr000003.html). The process for getting words into and out of Scrabble legitimacy doesn’t seem to run very systematically. Oh, and **tarragon918**? “Qat” is listed in the book I cited above as a variant spelling of “kat”, a type of evergreen shrub. ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/14 "2001-11-07T22:12:26Z")
You can deal with this by deciding ahead of time which dictionary you’ll play with. Before I got a Scrabble dictionary, we never used XU or HM or CHI or QOPH or any of those types of words. Now that we use Scrabble-dictionary words (mostly because we play electronically and the dictionary is loaded and checks everything instead of using a challenge system) we’ve gone to memorizing those good little buggers like TAV and XI and OBI and QAT. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2001, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/15 "2001-11-07T22:17:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tarragon918 \* > \*\*Does anyone know what QAT means?! LOL I haven’t yet found a dictionary which lists this word; it’s acceptable in Scrabble, yet unacceptable in Scrabble Blitz! Why is that?! Whew, it does feel good to get that off my chest so to speak. \*\* Qat (pronounced “cot” like a small bed) is a legitimate word. It’s a stimulant gathered from a tree, popular in Africa; you can chew or smoke it. It’s sort of like a very weak version of cocaine. Technically it is illegal in most Western countries, though it’s my understanding that it’s not a strong enough drug to be so popular that the authorities do much to chase after it. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/16 "2001-11-08T01:20:11Z")
For a thorough, indeed exhaustive discussion of Scrabble words and rules, I recommend reading [_Word Freak_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0618015841/qid%3D1005182351/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/107-6163342-0944568). It’s very entertaining as well as informative. ---
**Author:** ![Tenebras](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@Tenebras](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tenebras)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/17 "2001-11-08T01:45:58Z")
My mother plays for blood, but we don’t use a Scrabble disctionary precisely because it gives no definitions. Then, if you have nothing to put down and you just drop some letters onto the board at random, hoping to hit on something English (at which point you are of course challenged), you actually learn something every once in a while. It’s also way more satisfying to say “ah yes, to youf. Of course this means to bark. Duh.” and then look all proud of yourself for costing your mother a turn. Muahahaha… Tenebras ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/18 "2001-11-08T05:54:54Z")
and one man’s “that ain’t a word anywhere outside scrabble” is another man’s actual word. A good example being aa, which I’ve actually heard used in real life. (It means a type of lava often found in Hawaii). My suggestion is to find a list of all the 2-letter words (at least one such link has been posted in this thread), print them out, and allow everyone to have access to them during the game. That puts everyone on an even footing, and allows a lot of interesting plays. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Damage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@Mister\_Damage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Damage)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/19 "2001-11-08T07:29:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tenebras \* > **we don’t use a Scrabble disctionary precisely because it gives no definitions** I think maybe you are confusing the _Scrabble Official Word List_ with the _Official Scrabble Players Dictionary_? Growing up, my family had the first and then second editions of the _Official Scrabble Players Dictionary_ (in hardcover!), and it did provide _some_ definitions (but generally only one definition per word, even when the word had multiple meanings, or even could be used as different parts of speech). We used these as the final arbiter for both Scrabble and Boggle, with a few exceptions - we would occasionally allow words that were not in this dictionary, if all parties agreed that the word was valid English, but was missing from the Scrabble dictionary. This would happen with neologisms that post-dated the dictionary (with greater frequency, as more time passed from when the dictionary was first published). ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2001, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027/20 "2001-11-08T08:40:39Z")
Never play scrabble at the [games.com](http://games.com) website because all those little 2 letter words count of course sometimes players will let words count also if we know them But they get mad if ya challenge them too much and vote ya off the game also i think they changed the rules a bit also because I think they allow abbreviations on it I haven’t taken time to read them there yet Have they changed the rules any since Hasbro (who also owns trivial pursuit) bought the game? As for the home version we had a deluxe set that was plastic was actually had slotted squares for the letters and was on a turn table I think at the time it costs 40 bucks We played to help my brother in spelling but I always won Is it true that they had planned a version sort of like the 500 dollar monopoly game with the letters in gold squares? And all the extras? Or was that something that never happened? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-those-convenient-little-words-in-scrabble-really-words/92027.md?page=2)