Some Interesting FACTS
OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
A few useful facts about English
·
Assassination is a word four S present in
a single word.
·
A
pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
·
A
word or sentence that is the same front and back (racecar, kayak) is called a palindrome.
·
All
pilots on international flights identify themselves in English regardless of
their country of origin.
·
Almost
is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in
alphabetical order.
·
Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts,
and worms like fried bacon.
·
Bookkeeper and bookkeeping are the only 2 words in the English language with three
consecutive double letters.
·
Canada is an Indian word meaning
‘Big Village’.
·
Dreamt is the only English word
that ends in the letters ‘MT’.
·
English
is the language of navigation, aviation
and of Christianity? It is the ecumenical language of the World Council of
Churches.
·
English
is the medium for 80% of the information stored in the world's computers?
·
English
is the most widespread language in the world and is more widely spoken and
written than any other language.
·
Five
of the largest broadcasting companies in the world (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC and CBC)
transmit in English, reaching millions of people all over the world.
·
Goddessship is the only word in the
English language with a triple letter.
·
I Am. is the shortest complete
sentence.
·
In
Italy, 17 is considered an unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky
number.
·
In
the English language there are only three words that have a letter that repeats
six times.
·
In
Webster’s 1996 dictionary, 315 entries were misspelled.
·
Jim
Henson first coined the word Muppet.
It is a combination of marionette
and puppet.
·
Longest
one syllable word in the English language is 'screeched'.
·
Longest word in English – Paraskevidekatriaphobia means fear of Friday the
13th (which occurs one to three times a year). In Italy, 17 is considered an
unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky number.
·
Longest word in English – SUPEREXTRAORDINARISSIMO: 23 alphabets
·
Longest
word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS:45 alphabets
·
Longest
word that is typed with only the left hand
- Stewardesses.
·
Los
Angeles’ full name is ‘El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de
Porciuncula’. It can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: L.A.
·
Maine is the only state whose name
is just one syllable.
·
More
people are afraid of open spaces (keno phobia) than of tight spaces
(claustrophobia).
·
More
than half of the world's technical and scientific periodicals are in English?
·
No
word in the English language rhymes with month,
orange, silver, or purple.
·
No
words in the English language rhyme with the words angel, angst, breadth, bulb, depth, eighth, month, ninth, orange,
purple, scalp or twelfth.
·
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.
·
One
(1) out of every eight (8) letters written is an e.
·
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.
·
Over
700 million people, speak English, as a foreign language.
·
'Q'
is the least used letter in the English alphabet.
·
Quidnunc
means a person who is eager to know the latest news and gossip.
·
Rhythm is the longest English word
without a vowel.
·
Shakespeare
invented the words “assassination” and “bump.”
·
Skiing is the only word with double
‘i’.
·
The
‘if’ and ‘then’ parts of conditional (‘if P then Q’) statement are called the
protasis (P) and apodosis (Q).
·
The
countdown (counting down from 10 for
an event such as New-Years Day) was first used in a 1929 German silent film
called ‘Die Frau Im Monde’ (The Girl in the Moon).
·
The
dot on top of the letter 'i' is called a title.
·
The
expression to 'knuckle down' originated from playing marbles (players used to
put their knuckles to the ground for their best shots).
·
The
first English dictionary was written in 1755.
·
The
first letters of the months July through to November spell JASON.
·
The
Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters.
·
The meaning of 'Quiz' was Trick.
·
The
most commonly used letter in the alphabet is E.
·
The
most commonly used word in English conversation is 'I'.
·
The
name for Oz in the Wizard of Oz was thought up when the creator Frank Baum
looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z.
·
The
name Jeep comes from ‘GP’, the army abbreviation for General Purpose.
·
The
name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy
before it.
·
The
names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with (not
counting the words “North” and “South).
·
The
oldest word in the English language is 'town'.
·
The
only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
·
The
only three words in the English language to have 2 consecutive ‘u’ are vacuum, residuum, and continuum.
·
The
original name for butterfly was flutterby.
·
The
past-tense of the English word "dare" is "durst".
·
The
phrase “rule of thumb” is derived
from an old English law, which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with
anything wider than your thumb.
·
The
sentence "Pack my box with five
dozen liquor jugs" uses every letter of the alphabet and uses the
least letters to do so!
·
The
sentence "The quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!
·
The
sentence where you can use ‘is’ after I i.e., “I is an English alphabet”.
·
The sixth sick sheik’s sixth
sheep’s sick
is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.
·
The
term 'anesthesia' was coined by
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
·
The
term 'astrology' literally means
Star Speech.
·
The
tool doctors wrap around a patient’s arm to measure blood pressure is called a
sphygmomanometer.
·
The
word "alphabet" is derived
from the first two letters in the Greek alphabet: "alpha" and
"beta".
·
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 "Set" has more
definitions than any other word in the English language.
·
The
word “Lethologica” describes the
state of not being able to remember the word you want.
·
The
word “maverick” came into use after
Samuel Maverick, a Texan refused to brand his cattle. Eventually any unbranded
calf became known as a Maverick.
·
The
word old English word 'juke' meaning
dancing lends its name to the juke box.
·
The
word 'Quiz' was coined by Jim Daly Irishman.
·
The
word 'Strengths' is the longest word
in the English language with just one vowel.
·
The
word 'testify' derived from a time
when men were required to swear on their testicles.
·
The
words 'angry' and 'hungry' are the only two that end in
'gry'.
·
The
Yo-Yo originated as a weapon in the Philippine Islands during the sixteenth
century.
·
The
ZIP in “ZIP code” means Zoning Improvement Plan.
·
There
are only four words in the English language that end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and
hazardous.
·
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.
·
There
is three words in English with six alphabets these are as Degenerescence (six e's),
Indivisibility (six i's), and nonannouncement
(six n's).
·
Three-quarters
of the world's mail, telexes and cables are in English.
·
Tower may be used in verb like,
“It can tower price of petrol”.
·
Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13.
·
Underground is the only word in the
English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
·
Upper
and lower case letters are named “upper” and “lower” because in the time when
all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case letters
were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the lower case letters.
·
What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as
an "English kiss" in
France.
·
Words
that contain all the vowels in order: Facetious
and Abstemious
·
Words
that contain all the vowels in reverse order: Uncomplimentary, Unproprietary, Unoriental and Subcontinental.
·
Words
that contains all the vowels: Authentication,
Remuneration, Education, Automobile, Miscellaneous, Mensuration and
Permutation
and many more.
·
Words
with no vowel in them: Myth, Fly, Sky,
Dry, Cry, Rhythm, Crypt.
[13-04-14]