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Word Source: Greek Letters

The next logical group of "fun words" would be the Greek alphabet, though it is a odd stretch of logic where the names of letters from one language somehow qualify as words in another language ... but if we do have to talk about them, then they are part of a language.  Every letter of every alphabet is part of every languages in case somebody someday needs to mention them?  Anyway, the Greek Alphabet:

ALPHA*

BETA*

GAMMA*

DELTA*

EPSILON

ZETA

ETA

THETA

IOTA*

KAPPA

LAMBDA

MU

NU

XI

OMICRON

PI

RHO

SIGMA*

TAU

UPSILON

PHI

CHI*

PSI*

OMEGA*

Again, I marked words with asterisks which have other common usages.  ALPHA being the first of a set or the top dog in a social group, ALPHA and BETA are phases of software testing, DELTA is a variance, SIGMA in how significant a scientific result is, PI is universally known from geometry, you can have an IOTA (small amount) of something, and OMEGA is the last of a series.  It is hard to separate the mathematical use of the symbols from the things being symbolized.  Since the astronomer Bayer compiled one of the early star catalogs using Greek letters for the brightest stars in each constellation, you may be used to seeing these in names like Alpha Centauri and Omicron Persei ... yes, those become proper names and are not playable, but it's one reason why some of these will sound familiar.

Probably the most useful of these in Scrabble is XI.  Just put the X on a double-double or better position.

Don't forget the plurals.  I regularly play a word game which stiffs me for words like MUS and NUS and PIS.  There can be more than one of these letters, so if the singulars are words, then the plurals are words.  Words like PSIS, RHOS and XIS are just exotic fun.


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