A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated National Grammar Day with a toast to words. Well, National Grammar Day has come and gone, but we still have some interesting word facts to share with you. (And it is Pi Day, after all!) Ready?
Did you know that language does change — and enough so that an educated person will not be able to read or understand words in his or her own language written 500 years previously?
Can you guess the number of actively spoken languages in the world today? 6,000
In England in the 1800s, pants was considered a dirty word!
Gadsby, a book written by Ernest Vincent Wright, has over 50,000 words in it (about 250 pages), none of which contain the letter e!
What is the most popular first name in the world? Muhammad
Six words in the English language contain a double u: vacuum, muumuu, continuum, duumvirate, duumvir, and residuum.
- Duumvirate is a government position held jointly by two people.
- Duumvir refers to either of two magistrates of ancient Rome who held office jointly.
- Residuum is synonymous with remainder.
The most common official language of countries is English. What is the second most common? French.
China has more English speakers than the United States.
Afraid of vegetables? You have lachanophobia.…now eat your broccoli!
No words rhyme with either orange or purple, which you probably already know if you have ever tried to write a poem!
Only one word in the English language ends with the letters mt: dreamt, a variant spelling of dreamed.
What is the most common letter in the English language? e
What is the second most common vowel? a
What is the most common consonant in English? r followed by t
What is the most common first letter of a word? s
What are the only two words in English that end in –gry? hungry and angry
Some words have no singular form: glasses, binoculars, scissors, tongs, jeans, pants, pajamas (Articles of clothing become singular when used as adjectives: pajama party, jean jacket)
The word alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta
Ever wonder what the dot over the i and the j is called? The superscript dot.
Maine is the only state whose name consists of only one syllable.
Only four words in the English language end with -dous: horrendous, tremendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
The longest word in the English language is a scientific word referring to a part of DNA (another long word) and contains 1909 letters!
AND the toughest tongue twister in the English language?
- The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick. Say that three times fast!
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This was fun. Thanks for posting.
You’re welcome!
Thank you for your fascinating article, Arlene, and for the informative comment, Pete. We live and learn!
Glad you liked it!
A really interesting topic and comments. Thanks.
Thank you!
Thanks. Like this. Some words are not popular and rarely used in walks of life.
You’re welcome. Glad you like it.
Hiya Arlene,
Interesting as always. Arlo Guthrie once rhymed “orange” with a drawling pronunciation of “door hinge”. As for “purple”, it’s stretching it but it rhymes with “usurpal”. As in: “The coup was a blatant usurpal of the regime’s power…”
Rob
Thanks, Rob. Love those rhymes!
Back in the day when hot metal type ruled the printing world, the most popular device to cast lines of of type was the Linotype machine. This huge “typewriter” involved pots of boiling lead, sheets of lead to drop into the melting pot, and thousands of little letter forms that would slide down to the printing position. Aside from the spectacular 19th Century technology this involved was the arrangement of letters on the keyboard.
As you may know, the “Qwerty” keyboard was purposely made inefficient to avoid causing the typewriter’s ‘flying” levers to become entangled (at least less often). Similarly, the Linotype had its keyboard arranged to allow the most efficient movement of the most common letter moulds into the print position. So the home row of keys were: etaoin shrdlu — which are, in the approximately correct frequency order the letters of the alphabet based on the experience and custom of manual type compositors (people).
This series of letters was commonly used by newspaper compositors to indicate the last line of a news article. The employee responsible for assembling the full pages was supposed to remove the ‘slug’ with this line while making up the pages. However, the San Francisco Chronicle (toward the end of the Linotype period) was notorious for poor proofreading and a standing joke was the number of articles “written by Etaoin Shrdlu.”
Modern computing has been used to review large collections of text and have come up with slightly different frequency orders. (See wikipedia and search for “letter frequency in English.”) Linotype had done pretty well, but it appears that the letter “c” comes in just ahead of the letter “u” — but not to denigrate the Linotype folks, the difference is tiny: “c” has a frequency of 2.782% while “u” has a frequency of 2.758% — a difference of less than .03%
As always, thank you, Pete for the enlightenment! Your knowledge never ceases to amaze me!
Could you cover, again, bad/ badly? Is it okay to end a sentence with badly?
Sure. Briefly, here goes. Depends on verb. If the verb is an action verb, use badly, the adverb, to modify it. If the verb is a linking verb (generally verbs of being or the senses), use bad, the adjective. Here are some examples:
I did badly on the test.
I feel bad about the grade I got.
This tastes really bad; it must be stale.
I dance badly, but I try hard.
I see badly without my glasses.
My vision is bad without my glasses.
I see no reason why you can’t end a sentence with badly or any other adverb.
I sing badly.