1. The shortest complete sentence in the English language consists of
only one word and that is “Go”.
2. The oldest word in the English language is
“Town”.
3. In England, till 1880s using the word “pants” was considered
indecent.
4. 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”.
5. 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”.
6. The word with most number
of definitions in the English language is “set”.
7. 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.
8. 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.”
9. 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”.
10. There are
no words that could rhyme with the words, orange, purple, silver, or month
