10 Most Interesting Facts About Words In The English Language

10 Most Interesting Facts About Words In The English Language

1. There are no words that could rhyme with the words, orange, purple, silver, or month.

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2. There are six words in the English language which have the letter combination ‘uu’. They are “muumuu”, which means a long loose-fitting dress, “vacuum”, “continuum”, “duumvirate”, which is an alliance between two equally powerful political or military leaders, “duumvir”, which is a rule by two people and “residuum”, which means remainder. There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”. They are: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. There are three words in the English language that end in “-ceed”: proceed, exceed, and succeed. The only two meaningful words that end in “-gry” in the English language are: “angry” and “hungry

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3. 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.”

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4. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, and that seven-letter word is, “therein”, which contains: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein

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5. The word with most number of definitions in the English language is “set”.

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6. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the longest word in the English language is “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis”. The only other word with so many letters is its plural, “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokonioses”.

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7. The word “goodbye” came from “God bye”, which in turn comes from “God be with you”. The phrase “so long” came from the Arabic word “salaam” and also from the Hebrew word “shalom”.

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8. In England, till 1880s using the word “pants” was considered indecent.

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9. The oldest word in the English language is “Town”.

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10. The shortest complete sentence in the English language consists of only one word and that is “Go”.

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