And here is the final (well, maybe) installment of A Toast to Words….perhaps there are some tidbits here that you didn’t know.
The word triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. It is related to paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is the fear of Friday the 13th.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. What is so special about that sentence? It contains all 26 letters of the alphabet and is often used to test keyboards.
What is the shortest sentence in the English language? Very likely, Go. (It is a verb. The subject is the implied [you] in the command.)
Brunch, guesstimate, and motel are words that have something in common. Do you know what it is? They are called blends. They are made by joining just parts of existing words (unlike a compound word) to form a new word. Brunch is breakfast and lunch. Motel is motorcar and hotel. Guesstimate is, of course, guess and estimate.
Where did the name for Oz in The Wizard of Oz come from? Its creator, Frank Baum, looked up at his file cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z. I guess An was already taken!
Do you know Donald Duck’s middle name? Fauntleroy.
H, I, O, and X are the four letters that look the same if they are flipped upside down or viewed from the back.
Q is the only letter that does not appear in any of the 50 state’s names.
Canada is an Indian word that means Big Village.
Underground and underfund are the only words in the English language that begin and end with und.
Therein contains nine words without rearranging any of the letters: the, there, in, herein, here, ere, rein, he, her.
The letter combination ough can be pronounced in nine different ways. Here are the sounds in various words: rough, dough, thought, plough, through, Scarborough, slough, cough, hiccoughed.
The plastic sleeve sausage is sold in is called a chub.
Indivisibility has only one vowel repeated 6 times!
Do you know what the highest scoring word in Scrabble is? quartzy!
The fancy term for a blend word is portmanteau.
You are right – I almost put that in the post.
I think the word you meant to use in this sentence is ‘know,’ “A special request for you…..Is there anything you want to now about words, grammar, language, writing, self-publishing, etc. ?” I enjoyed the word trivia though! Thank you.
Thanks for alerting me about the typo! Will fix! We all need editors!
Does language shape our thoughts? Or, do our thoughts shape our language?
…know anyone who thinks in complete, coherent paragraphs? I think not.
Words, words, words and perhaps a sentence…
John B
Interesting question, John. I am going to say that language shapes our thoughts because without a way to express the thoughts, we can’t really have them. I am thinking of Orwell’s 1984 (which I am about to teach again), where they are eliminating words from the language so that people cannot think freely anymore.
In the tenth line of your text, from the bottom, would you please explain why the apostrophe in “state’s” is before the “s”?. Thanks very much!
Possessive. A state’s name. Probably should be plural – states’ names.