English Interesting Facts

1. Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards.

2. 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."

3. Floccinaucinihilipilification, the declaration of an item being useless, is the longest non-medical term in the English language.

4. WAS IT A CAR OR A CAT I SAW.. 'WASITACARORACATISAW'.. This is the only English sentence which even if we read in reverse, it'll give the same sentence.

5. "Goodbye" came from "God bye" which came from "God be with you."

6. The word "clitoris" comes from the Greek word meaning "side of a hill".

7. The Danish word for condom is 'svangerskabsforebyggendemiddel'.

8. 'Go', is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

9. The onion is named after the Latin word 'unio' meaning large pearl.

10. There are around 41,806 different spoken languages in the world today.

11. Shakespeare's works contain first-ever recordings of 2,035 English words, including critical, frugal, excellent, barefaced, assassination, and countless.

12. The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.

13. The word "pornography" comes from the Greek meaning the "writings of prostitutes."

14. There was no punctuation until the 15th century.

15. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and month! Interesting tries from our readers: orange: door hinge, melange (French for mix) purple: hurtle, durple?, turtle month: once, bunth?, hunch

16. The word Tips is actually an acronym standing for 'To Insure Prompt Service'.

17. The word taxi is spelled the same in English, German, French, Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese.

18. The word 'set' has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

19. The word 'News' is actually an acronym standing for the 4 cardinal compass points - North, East, West, and South!

20. The word 'Indiana' is Native American for 'Land of the Indians', yet less than 16,000 Native Americans live there.

21. The word 'gymnasium' comes from the Greek word gymnazein which means 'to exercise naked.'"
22. The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!

23. The phrase 'rule of thumb' is derived from and old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

24. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable"!

25. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan.

26. The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used!
27. The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad!

28. The longest word in the English language with no vowels is Rhythms!

29. The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses!

30. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

31. The distress code 'Mayday' comes from the French for help me, M'Aide!

32. The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof.

33. Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States!

34. Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye"!

35. More people in China speak English than in the United States.

36. In England, in the 1880's, 'Pants' was considered a dirty word.

37. In England, in the 1880's, "Pants" was considered a dirty word!

38. French was the official language of England for over 600 years.

39. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, "Gadsby", which contains over 50,000 words -- none of them with the letter E!

40. China has more English speakers than the United States.