I was playing a Scrabble game and had to find a word beginning with ‘q’ but I had no ‘u’… I felt sure there were such words but any that I knew escaped me, and I was forced to fail. Afterwards I looked up words beginning with ‘q’ but without a ‘u’ and actually found quite a few! I did already know ‘qat’ and ‘qigong’ but the rest were new to me. As I guessed most of them were from other languages, but at least I now have a few acceptable words which I can defeat my Scrabbling opponents with!
- qanat – underground tunnel for carrying irrigation water
- qasida – Arabic or Persian elegiac poem
- qat – leaves chewed or brewed in tea as a stimulant
- qigong – system of Chinese meditational exercises
- qintar – Albanian unit of currency
- qiviut – wool of the undercoat of a musk-ox
- qoph – a Hebrew letter
Lois Elsden 