Head and beak of a fierce-looking bird
CMMC,  Themed galleries

Gallery: A & E, the most common letters in our language?

March 30, 2024 / 44 Comments

When Samuel Morse invented the Morse Code he wanted to assign the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. To work out what those were he counted the number of letters in sets of printers’ type. He found that the most commonly used letter was E, followed by T, then A.

However, this method identified the letter frequency in English texts, which is dominated by a relatively small number of common words. If you play Wordle or any similar game you might be more interested in the frequency of letters in the full English vocabulary, regardless of word frequency. Apparently an analysis of the letters occurring in all the words listed in the main entries of the Concise Oxford Dictionary indicated that E is again the most common letter (appearing in around 11% of all words), followed this time by A (appearing in about 8.5%).

All of which is by way of introduction to my selection of images for Cee’s March alphabet challenge, looking for images of objects with an A and an E in the name. It’s been a while since I last played along so I thought it would be fun to do so this month. And I found that while these letters might be common, finding them in the same word wasn’t always easy!

Large solid-looking cathedral
ABBEY

St Alban’s Abbey, Hertfordshire, England

BEACH

Sandcastle on the beach at Torremolinos, Spain

Man building a large sandcastle
Camel standing on a ridge
CAMEL

Near Taqah, Oman

CATHEDRAL

The Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile

Roof and towers of a cathedral
Brown cow with large horns looking at camera
CATTLE

Near Djiffer, Senegal

EAGLE

Bald Eagle at a Birds of Prey centre in Bedfordshire, England

[my feature photo is of an African Fish Eagle at the same centre]

Head and beak of a fierce-looking bird
Two elephants facing each other in shallow water
ELEPHANT

Two bull elephants in a stand-off, Chobe National Park, Botswana

HARLEY

Harley Davidson in Taos, New Mexico

Close-up of a motorbike engine
Lake surrounded by bushes and with steep mountains beyond
LAKE

Lago Pehoe, Torres del Paine, Chile

LEAVES

A tree at Monte Alban, near Oaxaca, Mexico

Backlit bright leaves on a twig
Small monkey on a wooden beam
MARMOSET

At Praia do Forte, Brazil

PEACOCK

At Bachkovo Monastery, Bulgaria

Close-up of a peacock's tail feathers
Small salt pans on a hillside with two people working
SALINERAS

Salt pans, Salineras de Maras, Peru

44 Comments

Do share your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you! And please include your name in case WP marks you 'anonymous' - thank you