Suq, Souq, Sook, Souk, Suk

Yet another wonderful Arab word that likes its Q’s sans U. And, what’s more, there are five useful variants of this, with even more listed on Wikipedia. So let us delve into the world of suqs!

The suq is an open air market found in Northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula, and it can be used to refer to the physical market (as in, “Let’s go to the suq”) or as an economic market (as in, “The suq for yak butter is really flourishing these days).

I prefer Trader Joe's

If you’re wondering what the difference is between a suq and a bazaar, so am I. As best I can tell, a bazaar is either indoors or at least covered, whereas a suq is held in the open.

Thus we could use it in the following sentence.

“It rained today at the suq, so I went to the bazaar instead and bought baklava.”

First!

Greetings Scrabble nerds.

This blog is my attempt at helping myself learn the definitions to all the obscure Scrabble words that I keep forgetting. Like ‘ai’ and ‘fe’ and ‘suq’. I’m sure there are fascinating stories behind these words, and I aim to find them and share them with my tiny reading public. And I’m hoping that this process will tattoo them all into my mind, so that I may become unbeatable with my linguistic acumen.

Enjoy.