One-Letter Words, a Dictionary Read Online Free PDF Page A

recessive. A child who inherits one A and one O gene will be type A. Similarly, a child who inherits one B and one O gene will be type B. If both an A and a B gene are passed on, a child will be type AB. Only a child who inherits one O gene from each parent will be type O. —Mayo Clinic
     
    42. n. A person with type A blood.
If you are Type A…and the meat you keep eating is not metabolizing, your bloodstream is now flooded with thick, sticky agglutinated blood, loaded with saturated animal fat, just looking for a nice spot to deposit itself. It doesn’t take a genius IQ to see why A’s…should not eat meat, and if they do, they die younger. —Steven M. Weissberg, MD, InnerSelf Magazine
     
    43. n. A level: an ancient Egyptian level shaped like the letter A: “The crossbar has a line marking its center. A string is attached to the top of the A, and a weight keeps it taut. When the string hangs down right by the crossbar marking, the crossbar is level.”—Dr. John Burkardt
     
    44. n. (biology) Adenine, one of the four nitrogenous bases found in DNA nucleotides.
     
    45. n. (electronics) A battery: “A supply.”
     
    46. n. (logic) The notation of a universal affirmative statement, such as “all humans are mammals.” In categorical logic, the square of opposition describes the relationship between the universal affirmative A, the universal negative E, the particular affirmative I, and the particular negative O.
     
    47. n. (mathematics) A matrix.
The use of a single letter A to represent a matrix was crucial to the development of matrix algebra. —Marie A. Vitulli, “A Brief History of Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory”
     
    48. n. (astronomy) A class of white stars.
When an astronomer speaks of a class A star, he refers to white stars like Sirius and Vega, in whose spectra we see a very strong series of dark lines caused by hydrogen in the atmosphere. —Dennis Richard Danielson, The Book of the Cosmos
     
    49. n. A horizon: the dark-colored layer of topsoil, made up of humus and mineral particles, where seeds germinate.
     
     
    FOREIGN MEANINGS
    50. n. (Spanish) Point, as in a por a y be por be, “point by point.”
     
     
    FACTS AND FIGURES
    51. Vowel symbols were invented 5,000 years ago by the Sumerians (an ancient people of Mesopotamia). Their cuneiform writing was made up of pictures that represented syllables, but they had special characters for the vowels A, E, I, and U. But A traces its origins back to ancient Egypt, where it was symbolized by a picture of an eagle. Yet A started out as a consonant! Egyptian hieroglyphics did not have vowels—the eagle simply represented the A sound.
     
    52. One-letter words like “A” require a context in order to communicate meaning. We must remember that for something to be information, there is a requirement: If the set of parts is quite short, it lacks complexity to be sure that it constitutes information. For example, if we had a one-letter word, then there could easily be a very good chance that the word may have arisen from a random choice of letters. In such an instance, we could not make a good case for proving that the small word is actually information that came from an intelligent source—because there is not enough complexity. Secondly, the length of the string of letters must be of sufficient length to perform the function of communication. For example, the letter “A” is a word, but without being part of a phrase or sentence, we have no assurance that it actually functions to communicate anything. —R. Totten, A Mathematical Proof of Intelligent Design in Nature
     
     

 
    B IN PRINT AND PROVERB
    1. (phrase) Not to know B from a bull’s foot means to be illiterate. In 1916, Atlanta mayor James G. Woodward, a union printer at the Atlanta Journal, lampooned the pretentiousness of the city’s grand opera patrons, declaring that Atlantans “don’t know B from bull’s foot about grand opera, although they go and make a lot of fuss