Scrabble’s Two Letter Words – Po & Qi
Po
Po — A chamber pot. A literal pot to piss in. Primarily this expression is used in Australia or New Zealand. Though, considering how infrequent the word ‘chamber pot’ is used nowadays, I’m going to presume the Aussie/Kiwi word is infrequent as well. It’s possible the term ‘po’ is taken from the French word ‘pot de chambre’, since you would pronounce the word ‘pot’ in French the same way you would pronounce the last name of Edgar Allen Poe.
Since chamber pots are often taboo items, they attract slang terms. I’m fond of the attempt to somehow be indirect, classy, and vexingly disturbing, by calling it the ‘chamber utensil’. Once I heard the slang term ‘guzunder’, I didn’t think a glorified bed pan could sound more fun. That’s when I stumbled upon the term ‘thunder mug.’ It almost makes me wish I was an incontinent 18th century dandy, so I could yell at my servants to fetch me my thunder mug, post-haste!
Like all good pottery, chamber pots were occasionally decorated. An ornate chamber pot might make for a nice gift for a practical joker to give as a wedding present, since the pot was bound to get use, and every time it was used, the pot’s owner would think of the joker yet again. Faces were sometimes drawn at the base of the chamber pot, with shocked or disgusted expressions, for the owner of the pot to play target practice with. According to the Wellcome Collection, if a picture of a despised politician, or a polemic preacher, was painted on the bottom of the pot, those pots were “a lot more likely to sell.” Of course, diplomats and leaders from foreign nations were often common choices for target practice. King Louis XVI is said to have given a woman of his court a chamber pot of Benjamin Franklin, in part due to their potential sexual liaison.
Chamber pots don’t get much use in the developed world anymore, though they’re still employed by hospitals and people with mobility issues. And I’m sure you’ve seen one in real life, since children’s potties are so prevalent. They’re also still common in parts of the world where modern plumbing is, unfortunately, not present. And if you want to slander a politician in a developing nation, a useful tool would be to create a smear campaign around them wasting precious resources on something crass, like what happened to Philippine president Elpidio Quirino. Holding office from 1948-1953, Quirino rose through the ranks as a lawyer who helped shape the nation’s constitution, and became secretary of the interior and finance. Like presidents of the Philippines before him, he spoke Spanish during a time when there was a movement toward reinvigorating the native Tagalog culture and language. And his background in finances cemented him in people’s minds as rich and out of touch. So when a smear campaign accused him of owning a golden chamber pot, it became an easy rumor to latch onto. Quirino lost the election of ’53 in a landslide to Ramon Magsaysay, who was sworn into office wearing a traditional Barong Tagalog shirt, which later became the traditional dress of the Philippines.
Qi
Qi — Life energy, and according to a number of East Asian cultures, the vital force of all living things.
An aside: When playing Scrabble, if you remember any one word in this book, remember this word. It not only is the only two-letter word that uses the letter Q, but it also belongs to the very short list of English words that include a Q without a U. Here are five others:
Qat — An Arabian bush, otherwise known as a khat, whose leaves are a stimulant.
Qoph — The nineteenth letter of the Semetic alphabet.
Cinq — The French word for five. Sometimes used in English when talking about dice, cards, or dominoes.
Qadi — A Muslim judge who interprets Islamic law.
Qaid — Alternate spelling of ‘Caid’ or ‘Alcaid’. A commander of a Spanish, Portuguese, or Moorish fortress.
There are more five, six, and seven letter words with Q and no U, though the chances you’ll be able use them in the moment are less likely since they are uncommon words, and these quick definitions are likely to be forgotten. Feel free to seek them out if you really want to ace this category. But the four you’re more likely to remember because you probably already recognize the words are:
Faqir — A Dervish. A practitioner of Islam that lives off of alms.
Tranq — Short for ‘Tranquilizer’.
Qwerty — The style of keyboard you probably use. Qwerty keyboards are called that because the first six letters from left to right are Q-W-E-R-T-Y.
Sheqel — The monetary unit of currency for Israel.
Also all of those words as their plural form: Qis, Qats, Qophs, Cinqs, Qadis, Qaids, Faqirs, Tranqs, Qwertys, and Sheqels.
But back to the subject at hand. Qi literally means ‘air’ or ‘breath’, but qi is not the same as breathing. It is the energy that flows throughout everything. Unimpeded qi results in good health and great power.
It’s difficult to have a conversation about qi without having a conversation about the problems of pseudoscience and quackery. The concept that is qi, is relatively innocent. For example in this video, Master Mantak Chia defines qi as bioelectric energy that is both in us, and is all around us. That’s a reasonable enough statement. But things break down once a person tries to find a practical use for ambient energy in their daily life. In the same video, Master Chia says that “when people are not a success, their mind go one way, their eye go one way, their heart go one way. So energy is very scattered, and you lose energy.” Master Chia isn’t wrong about how, when a person loses focus, they tend not to succeed. But he started in the realm of physics, then quietly maneuvered his way into the realm of psychology and the concept of mental fortitude. He’s taking advantage of the fact that there are many definitions for the word ‘energy’, and pretending they can be swapped interchangeably, like a magician misdirecting his audience while moving a foam ball between cups.
That said, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I think there are all kinds of valuable things we can learn from practitioners of good qi, from interior design, to good mental health, to excellent body control with martial arts training. Qi teachings may not be scientific, but the lessons that come with those teachings are informative and rewarding none the less. We don’t need to explain that aligning objects in the house to flow energy in and out of the main doorway results in a greater sense of harmony. Everything feels more welcoming when furniture is aligned toward you. It feels more disjointed when everything is turned each which way. The reasoning a qi practitioner might use for why it feels good might be questionable, but the results are still the same.
For that reason, many people presume that an overt fascination with qi is harmless, since thousands of years of philosophizing over this one pseudoscientific idea has led to many, many good practices. But when a fascination with qi becomes zealotry, the results can be damaging and sometimes disastrous. During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the Yìhétuán; I-Ho T’uan, The League of Harmony and Justice, believed that their special martial arts boxing technique empowered them with invulnerability, making them impervious to knives, rifle bullets, and cannon shot. Their overconfidence led to numerous disasters when the Eight-Nation Alliance trained their guns on these confused martial artists.
This is what makes having a conversation about qi difficult. Just because there are con artists and fake masters who built entire reputations around spiritualism as a superpower, doesn’t mean that spiritualism itself is wrong, or that there aren’t good spiritual leaders who want to provide a structured way of life without misleading people with false promises. As with many things, poor arguments about the concept of qi is what happens when people take an extremist approach to an otherwise reasonable thought.
And there are many good masters out there. It’s difficult to see past self-proclaimed masters of Tai Chi who pretend to have a magic slap that can destroy a watermelon from the inside-out, or who challenge MMA fighters only to find themselves pummeled into the ground in ten seconds. But when we do look past those charlatans, we find people like those who work for the Tai Chi for Health Institute, which proclaims:
Tai chi is a most effective martial art, but training to use it for fighting is another matter. The training techniques that lead to the actual fight, such as sparring and fast punches, are the final stage of the martial art components. This stage has a higher chance of injury. Nowadays, there is little chance that we need to physically fight for our lives, and if that happens we would have little chance against anyone with a gun no matter how skillful we are.
The Institute understands that it needs to temper expectations, even while recognizing the incredible value that tai chi can have in one’s life. It’s not that tai chi, or any martial art with a heavy focus on qi, is bad for self-defense. But when practicing a martial art, the artist should know both their style’s strengths and limits. Like any centuries old practice, ancient martial arts will feature outmoded styles of thinking. Yet their study can be incredibly effective. What’s important is finding the valuable thing in your studies and learning from that, and not to swallow whole everything a 14th century monk thought important, or a 20th century con artist wanted to sell you.
