O is for Onomatopoeia

Sparquay's first guest post in this series was such a success, he's back for round two with the letter O.

            Today I get to talk about that curious little oval in our alphabet which is only differentiated from the number zero in typography by being a slightly fatter oval. It unnerves me that there are two distinct characters where are not dissimilar enough from each other, especially when entering in those Captcha codes that test whether or not you’re a real human. I think zero should reinstate the slash-through that distinguished its character as a number rather than a letter.

           

            But back to the rotund letter. Do you think it has issues with its obese image? Or has it bravely taken on the stance of big, bold, and beautiful? I see ‘O’ as a very large man who is wide as he is tall (but slightly below average height), with a bowler hat, black suit with tails, a monocle, and complete with a prominent mustache hung underneath his nose. He either listens to opera, or is a supreme tenor in the opera. Whatever character it has taken as you personally anthropomorphize it, it stands as a prominent vowel, making it’s presence known throughout our vocabulary.*

I don't know where Sparquay is
finding these images, but they're
getting a bit creepy.

            There are some great words that start with ‘O’: Ominous, Orchestra, Ostrich, Ocean. You begin to get the feeling that ‘O’ got all the great refined words, which all the more reinforces the image I described earlier.

            Orchids are a favorite flower of mine (please, don’t think it odd that someone of the male gender has a favorite flower). Unlike most flowers that have several lines of symmetry, I enjoy the beauty of the orchid with just one vertical line of symmetry. Irises are another one of my favorite flowers, but that doesn’t begin with ‘O’.

            Georgia O’Keefe has always been among my favorite painters. Her style is unlike any other with such simple and detailed subjects that become striking to the eye. Flowers, skulls, and desert backgrounds are the prominent images in her most popular paintings. She captures the beauty in what others would have passed off as boring or morbid. Fine cracks with the bleached bones and soft complete gradients throughout the petals of a flower make her paintings appreciable from a distance and, equally, up close.

            And finally, onomatopoeia is a fun word to say and spell. With all those vowels coming together at the end... it must make ‘U’ jealous.**

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*I was going to attempt to count how many times I used ‘O’ in this paragraph, but my short attention span kicked in and decided there were better things to do... like continue writing this blog post in time for CheekySu’s deadline.

**And if you haven’t picked up on it yet... I’m hopelessly random.