English Language Trivia

"Rhythms" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels. *Mark B. says: "rhythms" and "syzygy", I believe, contain the vowel "Y" in these cases; thus, these are words that do have a vowel.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is 'uncopyrightable'

The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed. 

The word "dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in the letters 'mt'.  

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."  *Mark B:The longest 1-syllable word in not just "screeched". There is "scratched" and "strengths" to name a few others.

"Muscle" stems from the word "mouse." People believed watching muscles move looked like a mouse crawling under the skin. 

"Q" is the only letter that does not appear in any of the names of the 50 United States. 

There is no synonym for "thesaurus." 

"Whence" means "from where," so "from whence" is redundant. 

The only word with three double letters back to back is "bookkeeper"  

The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

The word "set" has the highest number of separate definitions in the English Language (192 definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary.)

The word 'news' did not come about because it was the plural of 'new.' It came from the first letters of the words North, East, West and South. This was because information was being gathered from all different directions.

In the 19th century, craftsmen who made hats were known to be excitable and irrational, as well as to tremble with palsy and mix up their words. Such behavior gave rise to the familiar expression "mad as a hatter". The disorder, called hatter's shakes, was caused by chronic mercury poisoning from the solution used to treat the felt. Attacking the central nervous system, the toxin led to behavioral symptoms.

In 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, investigated, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

A "Blue Moon" is the second full moon in a calendar month (it is rarely blue).

"Second string," meaning "replacement or backup," comes from the middle ages. An archer always carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke.

"Ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

The last thing to happen is the ultimate. The next-to-last is the penultimate, and the second-to-last is the antepenultimate.

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July 3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."

Theodore Roosevelt was the only U.S. president to deliver an inaugural address without using the word "I". Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower tied for second place, using "I" only once in their inaugural addresses.

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

Typewriter and Proprietor are the only ten letter words you can type on the top row of your keyboard. *(thanks for proprietor Michele)

"I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The longest non-medical word in the English language is floccipausinihilipilification (29 letters), which means "the act of estimating as worthless." Mark B wrote: The longest non-medical word in the English Language is not "floccipausinihilipilification" (29 letters) but rather
"pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (45 letters) meaning "a
pneumoconiosis caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust "

The pound sign # is called a 'octothorp.

The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'

The word "trivia" comes from the Latin "trivium" which is the place where three roads meet, a public square. People would gather and talk about all sorts of matters, most of which were trivial.

All pilots on international flights identify themselves in English.

There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

"Irrupt" is a misspelling of "erupt," right? Wrong! The two have existed as discrete words since at least the mid-1500s. Both are descendants of the Latin verb "rumpere," which means "to break," but "irrupt" was formed by adding the prefix "ir-" (in the sense "into") while "erupt" was formed by adding "e-" (meaning "out"). So "to irrupt" was originally to rush in, and "to erupt" was to rush out. But it's sometimes hard to distinguish the precise direction of a violent rush, and the two soon came to be used as synonyms, a usage that has continued for at least the last 400 years.

In the English language there are only three words that have a letter that repeats six times. Degenerescence (six e's), Indivisibility (six i's), and nonannouncement (six n's).

The only three words in the English language to have 2 consecutive u's is vacuum, residuum, and continuum.

The only word in the English language that has 4 sets of double letters in a row is balloonneer.

The only word with all the vowels in reverse order is subcontinental.

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!

The sentence "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs" uses every letter of the alphabet and uses the least letters to do so!

Did you know?
"Adjure"(verb) and its synonyms "entreat," "importune," and "implore" all mean "to ask earnestly." "Adjure" implies advising as well as pleading, and is often accompanied by the invocation of something sacred. "Entreat" implies an effort to persuade or overcome resistance. "Importune" goes further, adding a sense of annoying persistence in trying to break down resistance to a request. "Implore," on the other hand, suggests a great urgency or anguished appeal on the part of the speaker.

Would you believe..argy-bargy? (ahr-jee-BAHR-jee). "Argy-bargy" and its slightly older variant "argle-bargle" have been a part of British English since the second half of the 19th century. "Argy" and "argle" evolved in certain English and Scottish dialects as variant forms of "argue." As far as we can tell, "bargy" and "bargle" never existed as independent words; they only came to life with the compounds as singsong reduplications of "argy" and "argle." Therefore, argy-bargy means to have a lively discussion. So the next time you have a heated discussion with your significant other, tell them you will win this "argy-bargy."

Recidivism means literally "a falling back" and usually implies "into bad habits." It comes from the Latin word "recidivus," which means "recurring." As with a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior.

A few facts about English

1. English is the most widespread language in the world and is more widely spoken and written than any other language.
2. Over 400 million people use the English vocabulary as a mother tongue, only surpassed in numbers, but not in distribution by speakers of the many varieties of Chinese.
3. Over 700 million people, speak English, as a foreign language.
4. Did you know that of all the world's languages (over 2,700) English is arguably the richest in vocabulary; and that the Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words, and there are a half-million technical and scientific terms still uncatalogued?
5. Three-quarters of the world's mail, telexes and cables are in English.
6. Did you know that more than half of the world's technical and scientific periodicals are in English?
7. English is the medium for 80% of the information stored in the world's computers?
8. Did you know that English is the language of navigation, aviation and of Christianity; it is the ecumenical language of the World Council of Churches?
9. Five of the largest broadcasting companies in the world (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC and CBC) transmit in English, reaching millions and millions of people all over the world.

*The main language used throughout the world on the internet is English. The media that make up the Internet are overwhelmingly American in origin, so it is no wonder that the mother tongue of the Web is English. Four factors determine the degree to which a given language finds use on the Internet:

(1) the number of users of the language, (2) the extent of its use as an official language, (3) the economic power of the language and (4) the volume of information disseminated in that language. Today, English reigns supreme in all four respects. It is studied as a foreign language throughout the world and employed by a majority of Internet users. Of the 163 member nations of the U.N., more use English as their official language than any other. The easiest way to calculate the economic influence of a language may be to add up the gross domestic products (GDP) of all the nations where it is spoken. People who count English as their mother tongue make up less than 10% of the world's population, but possess over 30% of the world's economic power. Therefore, in terms of the quantity of transmitted information, English is the leader by far. After English, 26 nations in the U.N. cite French as their official tongue, 21 Spanish and 17 Arabic. Each of these three languages forms a sizable linguistic constituency on the Internet.

* information compiled from various sources.

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