Why do people use the first letter in a word to help refer to it.?

Question

what is the difference between the first letter and any other letter in a word to help find it when you have no idea what it is in the first place.

Answer 1

The way the brain recognizes words is by process of elimination -- the eye reads the first letter(s), then the last letter(s), and then the middle. The reason is to "eliminate" the other possible choices faster. So starting with the first letter reduces the choices to only those words that begin with that letter; then considering the end eliminates more choices, etc.

People naturally associate words most strongly by the first letter; when trying to recall words, they tend to remember the first letter even when they can't think of the rest. Then they will try to bring up all associated choices from there.

Answer 2

Usually it's because they don't want to say the word itself because it's either a curse word or other "ugly" word. Since we can tell the context from the rest of the sentence, and there are only one or two in a relatively short list of "un-sayables", the first letter is all that's needed, usually, in order to avoid offending others or being inappropriate for the circumstances.

Answer 3

well if you wanted to say s_ _ _ and you used the second letter which is H how would you know what the word was. Oh maybe one would think it Honky. eh?
Say for instances the most popular work is the N word. So if someone said the R (the last letter) word how would you know it was the N word you were referring to.
Besides the N word is really the only one that is used to any frequency I think ....