Part two of a twenty-six part series.
Words we already knew
BAD | BEG | BOA | BRO |
BAE | BEL | BOB | BRR |
BAG | BET | BOD | BUB |
BAN | BIB | BOG | BUD |
BAP | BID | BOP | BUG |
BAR | BIG | BOT | BUM |
BAT | BIN | BOW | BUN |
BAY | BIO | BOX | BUS |
BED | BIT | BOY | BUT |
BEE | BIZ | BRA | BUY |
BYE |
BEL of course, being 10 decibels.
Words we already knew because they are plurals of a two-letter word
BAS | BIS | BOS | BYS |
More mouth sounds!
BAA | BAH | BOH# | BOO |
Easy loan words
BAO# | Chinese steamed bun |
BEN | Scottish mountain peak (as in Ben Nevis) |
BES | Another Hebrew letter. The second of the alphabet, also BETH (plural is BESES) |
BEY | Turkish governor |
BOK# | Africaans for an antelope, as in Springbok, Reebok. Like buck. |
Words that were new to me
BAC# | Baccalaureate, a university degree |
BAL | A type of shoe, from “Balmoral”. Detailed shoe nerdery at this guide. |
BAM | To hoax. Possibly from “bamboozle”. Current in the early 18th century. Also as a noun in the Scots sense. |
BEZ# | The second tine of a deer’s horn. Not in the OED, but Google Books is convincing. |
BOI# | In various contexts, an alternative spelling of “boy”. |
BON# | Good, adj. Literally French again, but part of multiple naturalized phrases. I’m sure I read somewhere that that qualified things for inclusion. I’m choosing to believe BONIER and BONIEST wouldn’t be valid if BONY wasn’t a word. |
BOR# | A form of address for a neighbour, formerly used in East Anglian dialect. |
BRU# | Like BRO, but more South African. Some examples |
BUR | Variant of BURR, in many of its meanings, including as a rough edge, or the act of removing a rough edge. |
Top 5 4 sketchy inclusions:
None of these seem as bad as the bad A words.
- BES should be dropped in favour of BETH, we don’t need two competing transliterations for the Hebrew letters. (But this will also cost some useful 2-letter words, so I’m happy to let it slide.)
- BOH is every day losing ground to DOH, but Francis Beaumont has won me round to it:
- BOR might be the most obscure, but it has citations from the 19th century.
- BUR is usually a spelling error
Good job, B words