Z

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.