Jazz.

Let's not limit our appreciation of four-letter words to the realm of everyday emotions (love, hate, fury, and fear) or everyday communication (busy, wash, call, game and wife) or even everyday cursing (crap, damn, twat and arse).

Compact combinations can dominate even in the world of competitive wordplay. Take Scrabble, for instance. The highest-scoring four-letter word in this globally beloved board game is in fact 'JAZZ'.

Under optimal board conditions, this little word can net you a satisfying 29 points - or even 117 points if you're lucky enough to land on a Triple Word Score with a Double Letter Score in play. Not bad for four letters wouldn’t you say!

And this got me thinking a bit more about this little Scrabble superstar - what is jazz? According to Google “Jazz music is a broad style of music characterised by complex harmony, syncopated rhythms and a heavy emphasis on improvisation, developed in New Orleans and Louisiana during the early twentieth century…”

And if fact - improvisation seems to be true too for the origins of the word jazz itself - a lot of making it up as people went along! Linguists, etymologists and lexicographers have been on the case for decades, and the real story sounds something like this.

The word jazz probably derives from the slang word “jasm,”which originally meant energy, vitality and spirit. The Oxford English Dictionary, the most reliable and complete record of the English language, traces “jasm” back to at least 1860. Jazz seems to have originated among white Americans, and the earliest printed uses are in fact in California baseball writing, where it means “lively and energetic.”  The word still holds this meaning, even for us in 2024, as in “let’s jazz this up!”

Jazz reminds us that four-letter words, much like the best things in life, often surprise us with their potency and depth of meaning. Whether it's 'JAZZ' lighting up your Scrabble board or love, hope or fire illuminating our darkest hours, these small words prove that size isn't everything.