(Almost) Useless English Trivia

Chase

Chase

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Feel free to add your own trivia about the English language, ASL, or SEE. Make comments on language trivia or ask questions.

1. Know what a “palindrome” is? It’s a sentence, phrase, or word that reads backward the same as it does forward.

These are some palindromic names and words fun to finger-spell:

bob . . . civic . . . did . . . hannah . . . kayak . . . level . . . madam
 
2. "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
 
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Chase said:
Feel free to add your own trivia about the English language, ASL, or SEE. Make comments on language trivia or ask questions.

1. Know what a “palindrome” is? It’s a sentence, phrase, or word that reads backward the same as it does forward.

These are some palindromic names and words fun to finger-spell:

bob . . . civic . . . did . . . hannah . . . kayak . . . level . . . madam
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grrr... gotta get my thinking caps back on... can't think before my cup of coffee.. be right back... grrr... be right back...
 
BelleSorrisa said:
"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
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What a great word for finger-spelling practice. I like the way you get to snap from u to n twice.



3. Only two words in the English language have all five vowels in order:

abstemious . . . facetious
 
1. a. There's MOM, DAD, and (sorry bro), SIS
 
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4. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is -

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis .... *whew*
 
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For those who want to know what this word means Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust found in volcanoes'."
 
5. No word in English language rhymes with: ... month ... silver ... purple ... orange
 
6. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" contains every letter in the standard English alphabet.
 
Chase said:
6. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" contains every letter in the standard English alphabet.
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That never dawned on me :) ... the sentence is familiar with me when I learned to type at High School.
 
7. Came across these common gripes on-line: Stupid English teachers make English too hard. It’s all crazy with no rhyme or reason: There’s no egg in an eggplant and can’t find a bit of eggs in an eggroll . . . Hamburger is made of beef, not ham . . . Why is it the same when your house burned up or burned down? Sheese, why?

It's all in the trivia:

a. English teachers don’t make up the language or its rules. People have produced both over several centuries through talking and writing. Good English teachers explain it; great English teachers inspire it's use.

b. The fruit of an eggplant is ovoid. That means in the shape of an egg. Duh. Egg roll (two words, not one) is a translation of a Chinese dish wrapped in a thin pancake made mostly from eggs and water. Double duh! They could have called it "water roll," but that would upset as many complainers.

c. English is a pot of many languages. Hamburger is a German term meaning “from Hamburg” (a German city). In that city, they were known for grinding meat and making patties of it. The name has nothing to do with the type of meat. The same is true of frankfurters. In Frankfurt (another German city) lots of butchers prepared ground meat in sections of tubes (don't ask what they used for the tubes).

d. Actually, correct English is “Your house burned.” Period. Adding an unnecessary preposition to the end of a phrase is poor grammar, so again, don’t blame English teachers.

It’s like “Where are going to?” should be simply “Where are you going?”

“That’s where it’s at” would more correctly be “That’s where it is.”
 
Ozzie said:
4. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is -

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis .... *whew*
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8. I thought 'Smiles' is the longest word -- it is a mile between those two S's. J/K :)
 
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S-mile-S. Good wordplay, Buffalo. What this thread's all about.

9. Speaking of buffalo, you know of course the American buffalo was misnamed by the English speakers who first saw them. The animal is really a bison, but the closest animal in the experience of those reporting on the New World was the African and Asion buffalo.

a. Same with the American Indian. Oops! We really aren't in India after all.

b. Ditto the American antelope. It's really a unique species, fastest animal in the North America . . . the pronghorn.

c. The elk in America are not the same critter in Europe. A better name is the native one, wapiti. I'm sure others know many similar goofs from all over.
 
d. We hear of people coming from "up north" or "down south", but never "left west" or "right east".

e. Boxing rings are not shaped like a ring at all. They're square!

f. Pineapples does not contain pine or apples.

g. "Slim chance" and "fat chance" mean the same.

h. "Flammable" and "Inflammable" mean the same.

i. Why not "teethbrush"?

If "mice" is the plural form of "mouse", why isn't "hice" the plural of "house"?

If "geese" is the plural form of "goose", why isn't "meese" the plural of "moose"?
 
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Ozzie said:
d. We hear of people coming from "up north" or "down south", but never "left west" or "right east".
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Your continuation of the list of English anomalies is great, but at least here in the U.S., some people who think of geography as a flat page have begun to say "left coast" for California, Oregon, and Washington and "right coast" for our eastern seaboard.

10. English history trivia (Great Britain): In very broad strokes, from 1066 to the 1300s, Old English was an underground language spoken by outlaws and subsequently suffered two and a half centuries of change. Chaucer’s Middle English of the 1300s became Shakespeare’s Modern English in the early 1600s.

Only then did Cawdrey’s Dictionary of 1604 attempt to codify the variations of spelling, punctuation and grammar so wide that English speakers from one end of Great Britain could sometimes barely understand the writing of those who supposedly spoke the same language at the other end.

By 1755, Johnson’s English Dictionary had completed the job, and written English of the U.K. was fairly standard. The Oxford English Dictionary of 1884 to present continues the U.K. tradition.
 
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Chase said:
Ozzie said:
d. We hear of people coming from "up north" or "down south", but never "left west" or "right east".

Your continuation of the list of English anomalies is great, but at least here in the U.S., some people who think of geography as a flat page have begun to say "left coast" for California, Oregon, and Washington and "right coast" for our eastern seaboard.

10. English history trivia (Great Britain): In very broad strokes, from 1066 to the 1300s, Old English was an underground language spoken by outlaws and subsequently suffered two and a half centuries of change. Chaucer’s Middle English of the 1300s became Shakespeare’s Modern English in the early 1600s.

Only then did Cawdrey’s Dictionary of 1604 attempt to codify the variations of spelling, punctuation and grammar so wide that English speakers from one end of Great Britain could sometimes barely understand the writing of those who supposedly spoke the same language at the other end.

By 1755, Johnson’s English Dictionary had completed the job, and written English of the U.K. was fairly standard. The Oxford English Dictionary of 1884 to present continues the U.K. tradition.
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Very interesting Weed Hopper :)
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Ozzie said:
d. We hear of people coming from "up north" or "down south", but never "left west" or "right east".
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We say "out West" and "back East". I think that reflects the pioneer days when Americans left the East coast to migrate to the West.
 
Chase said:
Your continuation of the list of English anomalies is great, but at least here in the U.S., some people who think of geography as a flat page have begun to say "left coast" for California, Oregon, and Washington and "right coast" for our eastern seaboard....
Click to expand...
I say "Left Coast" to refer to the political leanings of those states. :lol:
 
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