Alpha male, beta test, gamma ray, river delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta . . . English seems to have absorbed them as freely as it annexes words from any other language.

We often see them as answers in puzzles (such as crosswords) that don’t promise to exclude foreign words. But these aren’t Greek words. They’re the names of letters of the Greek alphabet. What can be more absolutely not English than the names of letters of the alphabet of another language and writing system?

For some reason they don’t seem unfair to me in crosswords or Spelling Bee, but in Wordle they do. Wordle solutions rely heavily on the structural patterns of English words, and kappa, sigma, omega, et cetera, don’t seem to me to belong in the same category. They ought to be out of bounds; that’s my opinion.

So I’m just curious: Where’s the line? What do you think?

Topics: English, words, language, Greek, Wordle, Greek alphabet