#in this case the Z sections are so sparse that i read both my english-latin and one of my english-french dictionaries
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Put a letter from A-Z in my ask and I’ll tell you 1 thing I love which starts with that letter.
i love the number zero. i love what it allows us to do. i love the concept of nothing, the void, absence; things that can only be defined in opposition to other things. i love how it's contained within the concept of every other concept if you dig deep enough. i also love the slang for "nothing" that starts with z - zip, zilch - and the fact that zillion also starts with z even though it's supposed to be a big number. i love how when we talk about a big number we talk about how many zeroes it has. paired opposites that rely on each other.
i love the zeugma as a figure of speech, especially when there's a verb being used in different idiomatic senses with two objects. i was so obnoxious about "you held your breath and the door for me" in alanis morissette's "hand over feet" in high school.
i love the word zigzag and how it represents its own meaning, because if you're zigzagging what are you doing but making a representation of the letter Z in the physical world? it's like the visual version of onomatopoeia. i keep seeing it in french in les misérables, so i looked it up and it actually comes to us from french, which makes me love it more because reduplication just hits different in french for some reason.
i feel a childlike wonder whenever i see a zamboni, and it feels like a gift, that i am still capable of such a reaction to such a mundane thing.
#thank you for the ask!! thinking about zero is so...🤩 also my brain is going to explode.#asks#not anon#now for the director's commentary portion of the tags:#my go-to move when i forget all the words that begin with a letter is to get out one of my english-to-another-language dictionaries#and just read through the pages for that letter (yes i do have a go-to move because i often find myself in this situation)#in this case the Z sections are so sparse that i read both my english-latin and one of my english-french dictionaries#and my favorite thing about that experience is that there were only 29 words starting with z in the french one#and one of those words was 'zoning ordinance'. ah yes. that mainstay of alphabet books. Z is for Zoning ordinance#(it's réglementation urbaine if you were wondering)
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