FACTS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

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]