ENGLISH LANGUAGE

English Language
1. 'I am.' is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
2. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without
killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression 'to get
fired.'
3. Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt.'
4. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does
arsenious, meaning 'containing arsenic.'
5. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when
customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints
and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase 'mind your P's and
Q's.'
6. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When
you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep
on. That's where the phrase, 'goodnight, sleep tight' came from.
7. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. (DON'T try this at home!)
8. It was the accepted practice in Babylon, 4,000 years ago, that for a month
after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the
mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was
lunar based, this period was called the 'honey month' or what we know today as
the 'honeymoon.'
9. Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or
handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle
to get some service. 'Wet your whistle,' is the phrase inspired by this
practice.
10. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
11. Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
12. 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.'
13. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
14. The longest one-syllable words in the English language are screeched and
scratched.
15. The longest place-name still in use is
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupo
-kaiwenuakitnatahu, a New Zealand hill.
16. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other
word with the same amount of letters is
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
17. The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the 'General
Purpose' vehicle, G.P.
18. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is
uncopyrightable.
19. The phrase 'rule of thumb' is derived from an old English law which stated
that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
20. The term 'the whole 9 yards' came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the Pacific.
When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo
belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the
pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got 'the whole 9 yards.'
21. The word 'Checkmate' in chess comes from the Persian phrase 'Shah Mat,' which
means 'the king is dead'.
22. The word 'set' has more definitions than any other word in the English
language.
23. There are only four words in the English language which end in '-dous'
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous and hazardous.
24. There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words
without rearranging any of its letters, 'therein': the, there, he, in, rein,
her, here, ere, therein, herein.
25. To 'testify' was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made
by swearing on their testicles.
26. Underground is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with
the letters 'und.'