In no
particular order...
- The most common letter in
English is "e".
- The most common vowel in
English is "e", followed by "a".
- The most common consonant in
English is "r", followed by "t".
- Every syllable in English must
have a vowel (sound). Not all syllables have consonants.
- Only two English words in
current use end in "-gry". They are "angry" and
"hungry".
- The word "bookkeeper"
(along with its associate "bookkeeping") is the only
unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters. Other
such words, like "sweet-toothed", require a hyphen to be readily
readable.
- The word "triskaidekaphobia" means "extreme fear of the number 13". This superstition is related to
- "paraskevidekatriaphobia", which means "fear of Friday the
13th".
- More English words begin with
the letter "s" than with any other letter.
- A preposition is always followed
by a noun (ie
noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund).
- The word
"uncopyrightable" is the longest English word in normal use that
contains no letter more than once.
- A sentence that contains all 26
letters of the alphabet is called a "pangram".
- The following sentence contains
all 26 letters of the alphabet: "The quick brown fox jumps over the
lazy dog." This sentence is often used to test typewriters or
keyboards.
- The only word in English that
ends with the letters "-mt" is "dreamt" (which is a
variant spelling of "dreamed") - as well of course as
"undreamt" :)
- A word formed by joining
together parts of existing words is called a "blend" (or, less
commonly, a "portmanteau word"). Many new words enter the
English language in this way. Examples are "brunch" (breakfast +
lunch); "motel" (motorcar + hotel); and "guesstimate"
(guess + estimate). Note that blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form when two whole
words join together, for example: website, blackboard, darkroom.
- The word "alphabet"
comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta.
- The dot over the letter
"i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript
dot".
- In normal usage, the # symbol
has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.
- In English, the @ symbol is
usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".
- If we place a comma before the word "and" at the end of a list, this is known as an "Oxford comma" or a "serial comma". For example: "I drink coffee, tea, and wine."
- Some words exist only in plural
form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears,
tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas (but note that clothing
words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in
"trouser pocket").
- The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. "I am."
- The word "Checkmate"
in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning
"the king is helpless".
- We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which 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 longest English word
without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
- The only planet not named after
a god is our own, Earth. The others are, in order from the Sun, Mercury,
Venus, [Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
- There are only 4 English words
in common use ending in "-dous": hazardous, horrendous,
stupendous, and tremendous.
- We can find 10 words in the
7-letter word "therein" without rearranging any of its letters:
the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
- The following sentence contains
7 identical words in a row and still makes sense. "It is true for all that
that that that that that that refers to is not the same that that
that that refers to." (= It is true for all that, that that
"that" which that "that" refers to is not the same
"that" which that "that" refers to.)
- A sentence with a similar pattern, which may help to unravel the above,
is:
It is true, despite everything you say, that this word which this word refers to is not the same word which this word refers to.
Or, if you insist on being really correct:
It is true, despite everything you say, that this word to which this word refers is not the same word to which this word refers. - The "QWERTY keyboard"
gains its name from the fact that its first 6 letter keys are Q, W, E, R,
T and Y. On early typewriters the keys were arranged in such a way as to
minimize the clashing of the mechanical rods that carried the letters.
From the Englishclub
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