Friday Five: English Language

Welcome to this week’s Friday Five. If you haven’t been here before, this is nothing more than my random rambling about something that interests me, with a list of five, in no particular order. Because I'm a lover of completely useless trivia, this week’s list is five random pieces of trivia about the English language (according to Amercan English anyway). Hope you enjoy!

 

Five Random Pieces of Trivia About the English Language:

 

1. “Stewardesses” is the longest word typed using only your left hand (which, by the way, does 56% of your typing. See, I knew we lefties had something over righties). Conversely, “lollipop” is the longest using only your right hand (notice it’s a shorter word, lazy righties). Of course, if you type like me, there’s not really any clear line between what letters you’re actually supposed to type with a specific hand—it’s fairly random. While we’re on the subject, “typewriter” is the longest word using letters from a single row on the keyboard.

 

 

2. There aren’t any words in the English language that rhyme with orange, silver, purple, or month—unless your name is Theodore Geisel in which case almost anything will rhyme with them. (Theodore Geisel is Dr. Seuss in case you didn’t know.)

3. Dreamt is the only word in the English language that ends with the letters “mt”, and there are only 4 words which end with “dous”: tremendous, hazardous, horrendous, and stupendous.

4. Ever wondered why when you download a new font, it gives you a sample sentence of: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”? That sentence uses every letter in the alphabet, so you can see what each letter looks like.

 

5. There are only two words (in the English language) which use all five vowels in order: facetious and abstemious. Can’t say as I’ve ever heard a single soul speak the word abstemious (which means moderate or temperate in eating/drinking).

 

 

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