Three letter rule poets such as John Milton alternated between short and long forms for function words, depending on whether they occurred on or off the meter. For instance: While many function words have more than two letters ("and", "she", "were", "therefore", etc.), the exceptions to the rule are rather two-letter content words. Only a few of these occur commonly in most texts: the words "go" (which also has a functional usage in the idiom "going to do something"), "ox" and, especially in American texts, "ax". English grammar is relatively flexible about converting words of one class to another, allowing verbal uses such
Four-letter word letters. Typical examples include the word "work", implying that work can be unpleasant, or the game of "golf", jokingly referred to as a four-letter word when a player's pastime becomes an exercise in frustration. "Charlotte Observer" journalist Doug Robarchek noted in 1993 how many politicians have names with four letters, "Ever notice how many U.S. politicians have names that are also four-letter words? Ford, Dole, Duke, Bush, Gore ... and how many make us think of four-letter words?" Four-letter word The phrase four-letter word refers to a set of English-language words written with four letters which are considered profane, including