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Interesting words and languages

  1. The first word spoken on the moon was "okay". (Or not - see comments).
  2. Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.
  3. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
  4. There are only four common words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. There's also annelidous, which you probably won't need - ever (unless you're a biologist (see comments).
  5. The "you are here" arrow on maps is called an ideo locator.
  6. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
  7. The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
  8. The symbol used in many URLs (Web addresses) is called a tilde. (~)
  9. The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
  10. In English, "four" is the only digit that has the same number of letters as its value.
  11. Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States.
  12. The word "trivia" comes from the Latin "trivium" which is the place where three roads meet, a public square. People would gather and talk about all sorts of matters, most of which were trivial.
  13. TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters only one row of the keyboard.
  14. "Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That's why when you're talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak of the Devil".
  15. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means, "the King is dead".
  16. Only three words have entered English from Czech: polka, pilsner, and robot.
  17. The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.
  18. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
  19. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
  20. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is:- pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
  21. The only other word with the same amount of letters as it is its plural:- pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses.
  22. The longest non-medical word in the English language is FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION, which means "the act of estimating as worthless".
  23. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
  24. The longest place-name still in use is:-'Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturi
    pukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu' it is the Maori name of a hill in New Zealand.
  25. The longest place name in the UK is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, it means The name means: "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave".
  26. The longest word in the Old Testament is "Malhershalahashbaz".
  27. Mafia in Old Arabic means 'sanctuary'.
  28. Some long running myths say that a pregnant goldfish is called a prat, twit, twat and twerp. The correct word is actually "gravid"which describes the conditon of a female livebearing fish when carrying young internally.
  29. Karaoke means 'empty orchestra' in Japanese.
  30. The first message tapped by Samuel Morse over his invention the telegraph was: "What hath God wraught?"
  31. The first words spoken by over Alexander Bell over the telephone were: "Watson, please come here. I want you.
  32. The first words spoken by Thomas Edison over the phonograph were: "Mary had a little lamb."
  33. "Papaphobia" is the fear of Popes.
  34. The Academy Award statue is named after a librarian's uncle. One day Margaret Herrick, librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, made a remark that the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar, and the name stuck.
  35. The three words in the English language with the letters "uu" are: vacuum, residuum and continuum.
  36. "Underground" is the only word in English that begins and ends with the letters "und."
  37. A baby in Florida was named: Truewilllaughinglifebuckyboomermanifestdestiny. His middle name is George James.
  38. 'Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
  39. The word 'Bye' is used in both English and Spanish meaning the same thing.
  40. "Pogonophobia" is the fear of beards.
  41. In Chinese, the words crisis and opportunity are the same. (Or not - see comments)
  42. The infinity character on the keyboard is called a "lemniscate".
  43. The valediction (thanks Erik) 'good bye' came from God bye which came from God be with you.
  44. So-long came from the Arabic salaam and the Hebrew shalom.
  45. The word 'nerd' was first coined by Dr. Seuss in 'If I ran the Zoo'.
  46. Before Jets, Jet lag was called Boat lag.
  47. The word "monosyllable" actually has five syllables in it.
  48. There are no words in the English language that rhyme with month, silver, purple or orange.
  49. The letter "n" ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel.
  50. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.
  51. 'Zorro' means 'fox' in Spanish.
  52. The verb "to cleave" has definitions which are antonyms of each other: to adhere and to separate.
  53. The verb "sanction" also has definitions which are antonyms: to sponsor and to ban.
  54. You won’t find a "6" in Cameroon phone numbers--the native language has no sound for "x.
  55. "The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable."
  56. There is a seven-letter word in English that contains eleven words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, I, therein, herein.
  57. Rhythm" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels.
  58. "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
  59. The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
  60. There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: "indivisibility."
  61. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." I wonder what "To get sacked" refers to?
  62. The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
  63. The letter most in use in the English language is "E" and the letter "Q" is least used.
  64. "Four" is the only number whose number of letters in the name equals the number.
  65. This sentence has thirty seven letters in it.
  66. The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent.
  67. Monday is the only day of the week with an anagram — dynamo.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this over time. 🙂

117 comments on “Interesting words and languages”

  1. what is the proper pronounciation of the words: golf and medicine?

  4. north america and south america don't star and end with the same letter???

  7. My students in Taiwan insist that North and South America are one continent...but come to think of it, some of those same (adult) students didn't know how many legs a spider has.

  8. "The letter "n" ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel."

    That's like saying that any English word that doesnt end in a vowel ends in a consonant.

  11. Since "n" is the only sound in Japanese that can occur without a vowel, "n" is the only consonant that a Japanese word can end in. Where as, in English a word can end in any number of consonants.

  14. North and South America are often considered a single continent (America).

  17. the first one may've been wrong, but to opt out of enjoying the rest seems awfully silly. and then to bother telling you? hm.

    nice list- thank you 🙂 i will, no doubt, be quoting and posting several of these for the next several days. got to have something to say at the thanksgiving table...

  18. i read in reader's digest that "to get the sack" refers to the days when workers would carry their tools in a sack. thus, if they were sent home, they were passed a sack to carry their tools away in. 😀

  19. Gracious me. What a lot of activity. Nice to see some of you are having fun. 🙂 I have removed the one repetition I found, if you could point out the other three I would be very grateful. The old eyes aren't what they used to be.

    Thanks for the get the sack info, whoever you are. It sounds believable.

    Quietly - you're welcome - Happy Thanksgiving.

  20. three words in english came from czech? I would like to correct it somewhat: 'pilsner' comes from town Plzen in german Pilsen so pilsner comes from the greman name rather than the czech one. However the word 'pistol' originated in czech as 'pistala'.

  23. You can't count North and South America as one "America" if you don't count Europe and Asia as one "Eurasia"... either way, it's broken.

  24. K so, the north and south in america dont realy count, its america that is the money word. and come on, when it comes to the japanese words ending in N. it may be the 'only' way they can end but is it something that you would have known? its an interesting fact. C'mon, quit reading into everything and enjoy it. And honestly, of all of these that i have looked at on the internet, this one has the most accurate information. a lot of these sites are based on peoples personal experience and local situations. like one place was picking apart TC shows where the bell rings before class but in 'real life it rings when u are late' which is school based i would assume, we always had one before and one after. =o) any way. nice list i enjoyed it.

  27. Regarding the comment about Seoul (relevance to English?), but Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, also means "capital" in Kazakh.

  32. I'd heard that "canada" came from a spanish explorer. When asked what he saw there, he said "I saw.....Nada".

    I think it was a clue on jeopardy, where I heard that.

  36. Lots of errors in this list.

    #1 is incorrect. The first word spoken on the moon was "Contact," not "Okay."

    #3 is incorrect. The statement that all continents start and end with the same letter is obviously false.

    Even if we accept one of the 5- or 6-continent models that group North America and South America into a single continent called America, all of these continent models have either "Europe," "Eurasia" or "Laurasia."

    At any rate, since the vast majority of English speaking countries teach the 7-continent model which separates North and South America, claim #3 is not only false but obviously so.

    #4 is incorrect. Those are not the only English words ending in "-dous." The word annelidous may be uncommon, but it is nonetheless an English word. Annelidous means: characteristic of the phylum Annelida.

    That's 3 out of the first 4 incorrect, and incorrect in ways that anyone could have verified with a simple Google search. Shamefully lazy, wouldn't you agree?

  38. in the south/north issue, perhaps we should inquire about the One China motto...kinda surprise taiwan students these days think of only one america...

    more than ample words in rhyming with those poor-proven maliciuos words like orange lag...

  39. This whole continent debate seems to revolve around whether or not America can be broken up into North or South. Why not look at the more obvious example of Oceania? Oceania is readily interchangeable with Australia and all you now need to do is to pick and choose what you want to call the continents to suit your purpose.
    Then, of course, whoever actually "named" the continents probably did this on purpose - which doesn't make it quite so amazing in hindsight.

  40. Um, can't you guys just be simplistic about the continent coincidence?
    I remember back in grade school i first learned about:

    America
    Africa
    Asia
    Europe
    Antartica

    If you wanna be anal yea, you can separate america in north and south, you can bitch about eurasia, though no one ever calls it that because of how diverse and large it would make that "one" continent. When's the last time anyone called australia, oceania, come on people. In simple english, the names start and end with the same letters, and really quit bitching because this isn't worth the 5 minutes i put into it.

  42. A brief history on the origin of the word Canada

    According to my Canadian Oxford English Dictionary, Canada comes from the Iroquian word kanata, which means "cluster of dwellings" or "village". The story goes that there was a miscommunication between early European explorers and the Iroquois. The Iroquois were talking about the village but the explorers thought that were talking about the country.

  44. there are only 2 words in the English language with all 5 vowels (ignoring "Y") in order (a,e,i,o,u)

    facetious and......

    does any one know the other one?

  45. There's abstentious, which means, not indulging an appetite especially for food or drink. There's also aerious, which means "airy", but I've never seen it in common use.

    I think there are a few more, but they are so obscure ...

    Oh and turn them into adverbs, with the suffix -ly, and you get all six.

  48. About "South America" and "North America" (what's the problem with "Central America") are not continents, but an arbitrary division of the continent called "America".

  49. The goldfish memory being 3 seconds is a myth. However the fact that the world traditionally is divided into 5 continents may indicate that the 3 second memory is relevant elsewhere

  50. "only other word with the same amount of letters as its plural is:- pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses"

    Or anything ending in -sis
    Hypothesis

    Sheep, buffalo, deer, fish etc...

    Bookkeeper - three successive double letters in a word.

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