Initial-letter contraction

“lord” in braille

Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 4 letters here, a saving of 2 cells. “lord” is the 1705th most common word in English.

Dots 5, then dots 1-2-3

Unicode ⠐⠇ — 4 letters in two cells

How to recognise it

A contraction that tells you when the code was written. It exists because nineteenth-century English printed the word constantly, and it survives into UEB unchanged. It and “spirit” are the two religious survivals on this list, and both are now far rarer in ordinary text than any of the other thirty-one — you will meet them in scripture and hymnals and almost nowhere else.

The second cell is the letter l

The second cell is the word's own first letter — the simpler half of this list. The other nine use a groupsign instead.

Where it may appear inside a longer word

Only at the start and in the middle and at the end and of a word. UEB allows these inside a longer word only where the letters keep their meaning, which spelling cannot decide, so this site settled it by counting: every English word containing “lord”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.

You will meet it as a word, not a fragment

The rule allows it inside a longer word, but none of the 5,000 commonest English words actually takes it there. Some on this list earn most of their keep buried in longer words — “part” turns up in nineteen of them — but this is not one of those. What it does have is the word itself: ranked 1705th in English, you will meet “lord” standing on its own often enough to want the two cells rather than the 4 letters spelled out.

The other 21 words under dots 5

The largest of the three prefix groups, so the prefix itself tells you little — the second cell does the work.

character, day, ever, father, here, know, mother, name, one, ought, part, question, right, some, there, through, time, under, where, work, young.

Check your own text

Type “lord” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.

“lord” in braille as an image

Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 2 and 3 — the whole word in two cells rather than 4 letters.

"lord" in braille: two cells, the first with dot 5 raised and the second with dots 1, 2 and 3.

Download the PNGCC BY 4.0.