The marble quarry at Tatlock, Ontario, courtesy of Gary Sparkes.
History
The letter Q is derived from the Greek koppa and Semitic qoph. The original meaning of qoph is most likely a “cord of wool” and the original representation, a knot. Another suggestion is that Q represented the eye of a needle with a thread. A similar word in Arabic suggests that it might mean “nape” and represent the back of a head and nape of the neck. Yet another suggestion is that Q represents a monkey. I rather like that one.
Q is for quatrain and quintain
In poetry, a quatrain is a four-line stanza and a quintain (or quintet) is a five-line stanza. These are usually part of a longer poem and may be variously rhymed.
There is something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!
It wears a sprig upon its breast,
And will not tell its name.
— Emily Dickinson, from “Time and Eternity”
Exercises
Write your own quatrain or quintain using at least one Q word. Which form is easier to write?
Special reading assignment
The quintessential quiet in the quarter acre was accentuated by the murmur of quaking aspens.
These lovely quails are marching across a planter.
Prefixes
quad—, quadr—, quadri— denote four of something, or a square.
quadrangle
quadrennium
quadrilateral
quadruped
quant— denotes a number of something or a measurement.
quantity
quantum
quart— denotes a fourth of something.
quarter
quartet (or quartette)
Exception:
The mineral quartz has a trigonal crystal form. The name is of Slavic origin.
quasi— means “as if” in Latin, but in English it now implies something that looks OK but is not quite right; “somewhat” or “almost.”
quasi-democratic
quasi-scientific
quasi-stellar object (a quasar)
quin— denotes the number five.
quinary
quincentenary (500th anniversary)
quintet
quintuplets
Suffixes
—que in Latin words means “and”, but English words with this ending are usually (but not always) derived from French. The original Latin ending may have been —icus or
—icare.
antique
appliqué
communiqué
grotesque [from Italian]
opaque
plaque [from Dutch]
Exercises
Can you identify additional words to add to the lists of prefixes and suffixes?
Use the words in sentences to clarify their meanings.
Special reading assignment
Quail belong to the same family as partridges and pheasants.
Quail eggs were sent to the Mir space station in 1990, where they were incubated and successfully hatched.
“Q, q”
Q was once a little quail,
Quaily
Faily
Daily
Quaily
Stumpy-taily
Little Quail!
— Edward Lear, The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse
Note: This blog post is an excerpt from a book, “English Manual: Letter by Letter,” to be published in the summer of 2015.
In the very centre of a Queen Anne’s Lace flower is one tiny purple floret.
The sounds of Q
The letter Q, which by itself has the sound of K or a hard C, is in English almost never found by itself, but rather as the digraph, QU. It may be better to think of it as a short K sound followed by a diphthong: UA, UE, UI, or UO.
quarter
quest
quit
quorum
Occasionally, a word with QU is pronounced as a K, without a following diphthong.
quay (pronounced “kee” and formerly spelt kay or key. These older spellings are still used in some instances, e.g., the Florida Keys.)
quoit
clique
When you understand the origins of letters, you understand English spelling.
Historically, the letter Q came by way of the Phoenicians (they had two K sounds, one a guttural Qof that does not exist in English). The Greeks took it over as qoppa or koppa, but dropped it, as their language did not use that sound. The Etruscans had three K sounds, gamma, kappa, and koppa, this last letter always used before u or o.
The Romans took their alphabet from the Etruscans, but Latin had only one K sound. They dropped kappa and finally used gamma as the letter C and koppa as the letter Q.
Latin needed a representative for the sound “kw” common to the language. The Romans used the letter Q followed by a V (as the letter U hadn’t been invented as yet).
In Old English, the “kw” sound was represented by CW. In their alphabet, “queen” would have been spelled, “cwen”.
The French continued with the Latin QV. When the Normans conquered England, French spelling came to be preferred. CW became QV, and then QU when the letter U was introduced as a vowel. The Norman influence complicated English spelling. Most words containing QU are derived from French and Latin.
The English language didn’t really need QU, as the old CW would have done.
queen (from Old English cwen)
quench (in Anglo-Saxon, cwencan)
bequeath (in Anglo-Saxon, bicweoan)
Where QU is pronounced as K, a simple K or C would have sufficed. The following words are derived from French. You may see them spelled with a K on signs or in social media.
antique
boutique
critique
technique
unique
English imports words from other languages, including Arabic. These words may be transcribed from the Arabic alphabet in different ways. The guttural K sound (the Arabic letter qaf) is sometimes transcribed as a lonely Q without a U and is still understandable in English. In the following list, the second instance is the preferred spelling.
burqa or burka or burkha
faqir or fakir
qabab or kebab or kabob
qat or khat or gat
Similarly, some Chinese words have been transcribed into English in different ways.
qi or chi or ki
qigong or chi gong or ki gong
Special reading assignment
Queen Anne’s Lace: a common roadside weed or a beautiful wild flower?
English Manual: Letter by Letter 