Oh, O, and o

Sometimes I read things that seem so completely obvious that I feel foolish for never having noticed it before. For example, the origin of the word “geometry” means measuring the earth. It’s right there — geo- for earth and -metry for measure — but I had simply never noticed it before even though I knew that using triangles is a common way of developing maps.

I’m following up The Adventure of English [which I mentioned here and plan to write about more] with Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z. In a description of the Greek alphabet I learned that omicron is the short o sound and omega the long o sound. And again, it’s right there — o-micron is little o, o-mega is big o.

Doh!