English Factoids and Trivia

English now contains close to a million words - way more than any other language. Technical terms have ballooned the total. But English is also thought to be the world's most varied language from a poetic standpoint...because borrowed words from other tongues create many synonyms.

In the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, unabridged, the most esteemed dictionary in English, the longest word was 'floccinaucinihilipilification,' which meant something that wasn't worth diddlysquat. But in the second edition, 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' took first place.   Careful, you might contract it by straining your lungs to pronounce it.   Source: www.worldwidewords.com

Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions!

When did correct spelling become important?
Spelling was a creative activity at least as late as Shakespeare's day, about 1600. In those good old days, spelling was no more fixed than the language, and the Bard himself appears to have spelled his own name differently every time he wrote it.  But the invention of the printing press and the spread of education that it fostered was already beginning to end all that. Wider literacy coincided with the rise of vernacular languages, which eclipsed Latin. English, like French, Italian, and other tongues, got serious, taking on rules, consistency and standardization. Setting it in type was like setting it in stone. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the rules solidified and a new subject was added to the curriculum. Everyone had to learn how to spell. Torture, no longer practiced in dungeons, was perpetuated in the classroom.  Source: THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ed. by Tom MacArthur and DICTIONARY OF MISINFORMATION by Tom Burnam

What English word do most people probably use more often than any other, aside from "the," "I," etc.?
Hello is ubiquitous.  That's it - unless you're one of those people who picks up the phone and says "yeah," or greets others merely with a nod. It started in Chaucer's time as "hallow," also a word for saint so perhaps it had some religious connotation, as in "bless you." It eventually evolved into "hallo." Nineteenth century Americans were saying "hullo" until it all fell into place as "hello" about the time that the telephone came into use.

But when the first telephone exchange was set up in 1878 in New Haven, Connecticut, people actually answered the phone with, "ahoy." While that happens to be the eccentric way that Alexander Graham Bell greeted people, I think the new invention simply left those folks feeling at sea.

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD AND PHRASE Origins by William and Mary Morris

WHAT WORD IN MODERN ENGLISH HAS BEEN AROUND THE LONGEST?
The answer is a tie. According to the Oxford English Diction- ary, which includes the dates of the earliest known usage of each English word, the words "town" and "priest" were noted around the years 601 to 604, taken from 7th-century Anglo- Saxon documents and stone inscriptions.

WHAT LETTER WAS THE LAST TO BE INCLUDED IN OUR ALPHABET?
The "j" which became the 26th letter during the fifteenth century.

Which letter is the oldest?
The letter "O" is the oldest letter. It has not changed in shape since its adoption in the Phoenician alphabet c. 1300 B.C.

THERE ARE FOURTEEN PUNCTUATION MARKS IN THE ENGLISH GRAMMAR. WHAT ARE THEY?
period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

WHAT ARE THE ONLY THREE WORDS IN STANDARD ENGLISH THAT BEGIN WITH THE LETTERS "DW".
Dwarf, dwell, and dwindle.

WHAT ARE THE ONLY TWO WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THAT CONTAIN ALL THE VOWELS, INCLUDING "Y," IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER?
Facetiously and Abstemiously.

WHAT WORD HAS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF SEPARATE DEFINITIONS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
The word "set" has the highest number of separate definitions in the English Language (192 definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary.)

WHY DO WE READ FROM LEFT TO RIGHT?
The early Greeks tried writing from right to left and left to right several times before settling into a system going from left to right. There is nothing inherent in the human brain or our visual system that requires that we read from left to right or top to bottom. Many languages have been written in different directions, and the brain is perfectly capable of adapting to symbols arranged in any order.

WHAT IS THE ONLY FIFTEEN LETTER WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THAT CAN BE WRITTEN WITHOUT REPEATING A LETER?
Uncopyrightable

WHAT IS THE ONLY TWO-SYLLABLE WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WITH NO TRUE VOWELS?
The word "rhythm".

WHAT IS THE ONLY WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WITH 3 CONSECUTIVE DOUBLE LETTERS?
Not Mississippi. Remember, the letters must be CONSECUTIVE.
Give up? It's BOOKKEEPER.

Words ending in dous
The English language contains only four words that end in "dous."   They are tremendous, stupendous, hazardous...and..and...if I don't tell you the last one that would absolutely horrendous.
(Source: OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY)

What's the proper way to pronounce "ye?"
The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman-occupied (present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".