• @gnutrino
    link
    English
    511 days ago

    Xenon? Xylem? Xenobiology? Xanthoma? Xylocarp? Xiphoid? Xerosis? Xyster? The scrabble favorites xi and xu?

    There’s loads of cool words that begin with x

    • TheTechnician27
      link
      fedilink
      English
      5
      edit-2
      11 days ago

      Xylophone: fun, colorful, easy for a kid to remember as a cute little instrument

      Xenon: An inert gas used in… MRI scans, I think?

      X-ray is probably the only other ‘X’ word with more real-world representation than xylophone, and as pointed out above, that’s not quite representative of how the letter is used phonetically in the rest of the language.

      • @gnutrino
        link
        English
        611 days ago

        Xylem is a mojor component of almost all the plants you see. I’m not sure how much more real-world representation you can get…

        • TheTechnician27
          link
          fedilink
          English
          6
          edit-2
          11 days ago

          By “real-world representation”, I mean “how often the word is actually used in the real world.” There are hundreds of trillions of neutrinos passing through you all the time, but I’d still think “nest” is a better word for kids.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        110 days ago

        It’s rarely used phonetically the same as xylophone. Usually it makes the [ks] sound, it only ever makes the [z] sound at the beginning of words. X-ray is actually much more in line with the typical phonetic representation in English.