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Dec 22, 2025
This week’s themeNo el This week’s words pipsqueak 
Why Not Use the ‘L’?, 1930
Art: Reginald Marsh Previous week’s theme Fossil words 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargThis week in A.Word.A.Day we unwrap a small holiday tradition of ours. Each Dec we feature five words that contain every letter except the letter L. That makes this week’s words a tiny holiday lipogram (a text omitting a specific letter). Why? Because No el. Think of it as a tiny linguistic stocking stuffer. Words that do their jobs cheerfully while leaving one letter out in the cold. Why? Because there’s no L in warm. These No L words are anything but bare. As you’ll discover, they ruffle, they squeak, they astonish, they rejuvenate, and yes, they even keep the stress at the end of the line. Joyeux Noël! (Etymologically speaking, Joyeux Noël means Happy Birth, but we suggest not saying it to a friend who is expecting unless the due date is Dec 25. Noël is from French, from Latin natalis, literally birth.) frowze
PRONUNCIATION:
(frowz)
MEANING:
verb tr., intr.: To be or to make untidy, tangled, or ruffled. noun: A wig of frizzed hair. ETYMOLOGY:
Origin unknown. Earliest documented use: 1563.
USAGE:
“In Asylum, [Simon Doonan] rejoices in the ‘frumpy’ look that Hardy Amies
devised for the prince’s great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II ... raving,
‘Long may she frowze!’” Liesl Schillinger; In the Mind of a Ringmaster; The New York Times; Sep 8, 2013. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time. -Jean-Michel
Basquiat, artist (22 Dec 1960-1988)
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