Strange Facts about Language
Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second? William Jefferson Clinton
"stewardesses" is the longest word in the English language that is typed with only the left hand.
There are no words in the English language that rhyme with orange, purple, silver or month
"dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends with the letters "mt"
Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing!
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive!
Clinophobia is the fear of beds!
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable"!
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
The plastic sleeves sausage is sold in is called a chub.
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye"!
Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States!
Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions!
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
There are only 4 words in the English language that ends in "dous", tremendous, horrendous, stupendous and hazardous.
The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used!
"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
Giddy" is from the AngloSaxon word "gyddig" means "Possessed by the Gods".
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
A "tyromancer" is "one who tells fortunes while watching cheese coagulate".
Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead".
Eskimoes have hundreds of words for ice but none for hello.
The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural. It's an infection of the lungs. Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula"-and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: "L.A."
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
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 Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'Libra' because it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'. The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation. Same goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation ('lira'coming from 'libra'). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence", abbreviated "L/s/d" (libra/solidus/denarius).
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
"Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
After English, the most widely used languages on the Internet are German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Danish, Russian, and Malay.
The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. Some say that the sentence "I do" is the longest.
If you read or listen to all the words in all four stanzas of "The Star Spangled Banner," you'll find that there are three words missing. The Words "United States" and the word "America" are never mentioned in the song. The U.S. Congress didn't make the song the official anthem of the U.S. until 1931 - 117 years after it was written.
The city of San Juan used to be known as Puerto Rico (which means "rich port" in Spanish), while the island of Puerto Rico was originally named San Juan.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
Pierre, South Dakota is the only example of a state and capital in the U.S. that don t share any letters.
Morere capital cities begin with B than any other letter: Berlin, Bern, Bonn, Bucharest, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Brasilia, Baghdad, Bratislava, Brussels, Belgrade, Bogota and of course Belfast.
The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.
Stewardesses and reverberated are the two longest words (12 letters each) that can be typed using only the left hand.
The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop.
"Copenhagen" means "Merchants Harbor".
Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing.
Beelzebub, another name for the devil, is Hebrew for "Lord of the Flies", and this is where the book's title comes from.
The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil's advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.
First novel ever written on a typewriter was "Tom Sawyer."
Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
cat got your tongue?: This a very old expression. It got turned around at some point in history. Technically, it should be "do you have a cat's tongue?" because it is based on the simple assumption that cats are incredibly quiet.
Funnybone: There's nothing funny about a knock on the inside of the elbow which hits the upper arm bone, the humerus, but it is the nerve which crosses over the humerus
It's a cinch: This expression which means, it's easy or no problem originates from the American West. A cinch strap holds the saddle on a horse. When the strap is properly cinched, there is no danger of the rider coming unseated because of a loose saddle.
Egg on: To egg someone on is to encourage a person to keep doing something, usually something not quite nice. It has nothing to do with eggs, but is a corruption of the word "edge."
Flash in the pan: This is a classic dead metaphor. It means a spectacular beginning that is quickly followed by failure. The allusion is to the action of the old flint-lock rifles. Occasionally after being all primed (loaded) to fire, the gun would misfire--there would be a big flash of the gun-powder going off in the lock-pan, but the projectile would not be shot.
Ax to grind: A person who has a selfish reason for wanting something to be done in a certain way or to a certain person is said to have an ax to grind. Benjamin Franklin once told a story about how a man came to him asking Ben to show him how the grindstone worked. He handed Ben an ax he had brought with him, and then pretended not to understand exactly how it worked until Ben had illustrated so often, the man's ax was thoroughly sharpened!
Dyed-in-the-wool: This phrase has come to mean genuine, true friend, one who sticks with you in good or bad times. If wool yarn is dyed before it is woven into cloth, the dye will penetrate completely, and the color will last, whereas if the cloth is woven before it is dyed, it will only color the surface and, as the cloth becomes worn, the color will disappear.
Fish or cut bait: There is no place for an idle person on fishing boat, so if you don't have something more useful to do even a child can cut bait for the others. It's easy to see how this applies in other situations.
Mealy-mouth: This is derivation from a Greek expression meaning "honey-mouth." It is used to describe a person who uses sweet, honeyed words hypocritically in order to curry favor with those more popular or more powerful.
Gimmick: At circuses and fairs during the 19th century a gimmick was a hidden mechanical device used by magicians to aid them in the performance of tricks. Nowadays a gimmick is any tricky method of making a sales, or a business deal, often in the form of a special inducement that is unusual. The word is often used in reverse meaning by those who have exposed the trick that was meant to take them in: "The gimmick is ..."
Curry Favor: This phrase, which means to seek to ingratiate yourself with someone by insincere flattery, or by doing small favors, is a corruption of the original saying, which was to "curry Favel." Favel was the name of a horse in a satirical 14th century French play. The horse symbolized evil, and the characters in the play curried him in order to soothe him and ward off trouble.
Give a Hoot: Hoot is a corruption or sound-alike for the word "iota," which is the smallest and therefore the least consequential letter in the Greek alphabet. Learned people sometimes say, "I don't give one iota."
Lock, Stock and Barrel: Originally described the three parts of a musket. Lock (or flintlock mechanism), stock (wooden base rested against the shoulder) and barrel. If you had these three parts, you had the whole thing or the whole gun -- lock, stock and barrel.
Mind your Ps & Qs Uppercase and Lowercase letters: When mechanical printing was accomplished (90+ years ago), the printing press master was created by arranging individual letters onto a plate and locking them into place. You'd have all the As in one bin, all the Bs in another bin, etc. so you had 26 bins + punctuation. There were 2 cases of bins of letters, one case contained Capitals, the other didn't. The capital letters were in the upper case, the others were in the lower case (bin). Since the printing machines forced the letters to be arranged upside down to the viewer, and since the letters were in mirror writing, it was easy to confuse an upside-down, backwards p with an upside-down, backwards q.