In 1945, Grace Hopper of Harvard University was working on a

malfunctioning computer and found a moth in the circuits which had caused
the computer to break down. Since then, the term “bug” refers to a
computer problem, especially software.
A person who studies caves is called a speleologist.
The words “silver”, “month”, “orange” and “purple” do not rhyme with any
other words in the English language.
The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English
language.
The word “ultimate” is the last thing to happen, “penultimate” is next-to-last
and “antepenultimate” is the last but two in a series; the third last. “The
antepenultimate item on the agenda”
The plastic material at the end of a shoe lace is called an aglet.
The ridges on the side of a coin are referred as milling or reeding.
An octothorpe is commonly known as the “pound” sign (#).
The dent between your nose and your lips is called a philtrum.
The ZIP in Zipcode means “Zoning improvement plan”.
You may have seen this sentence somewhere before – “The quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog.” This is an example of pangram sentence, a
sentence that uses every letter in the English alphabet.
“Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” is the longest word in
English. It has 45 letters, and is a type of lung disease caused by the
inhalation of ash and sand dust, mostly associated with volcanic ash.
The words we use repeatedly during conversation even if they don’t add
meaning to what you are saying are called “crutch words”. Commonly used
crutch words – “Actually”, “like”, “basically”, “anyway”.
There is name for the small dot in the letter “i” – a “tittle”
Many wonder what the symbol “&” is called. It’s an “ampersand”, and is a
version of the Latin word “et”, which means “and”.
English actually originates from what is now called north west Germany and
the Netherlands.
The phrase “long time no see” is believed to be a literal translation of a
Native American or Chinese phrase as it is not grammatically correct.
“Go!” is the shortest grammatically correct sentence in English. Find out
some of the longest words in the English language.
The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
About 4,000 words are added to the dictionary each year.
The two most common words in English are I and you.
11% of the entire English language is just the letter E.
The English language is said to be one of the happiest languages in the world
– oh, and the word “happy” is used 3 times more often than the word “sad”!
1/4 of the world’s population speaks at least some English.
The US doesn’t have an official language.
It is the only major language that doesn’t have any organisation guiding it –
as opposed to the French Académie française, the Spanish Real Academia
Española and the German Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung. These
organisations are responsible for controlling the evolution of their respective
language in terms of usage, vocabulary, and grammar.
The most common adjective used in English is “good”.
The most commonly used noun is “time”.
The word “set” has the highest number of definitions.
Month, orange, silver, and purple do not rhyme with any other word.
The English language contains a lot of contronyms – words that can have
contradictory meanings depending on context.
Over 80% of the information stored on computers worldwide is in English.
Words that are used to fill in time when speaking, such as “like” or
“basically”, are called crutch words (and should best be avoided!)
English is the official language of 67 countries.
90% of English text consists of just 1000 words.
There are 24 different dialects of English in the US.
The word ‘lol’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011.
What is known as British accent came to use in and around London around
the time of the American Revolution.
Shakespeare invented many words, such as birthplace, blushing, undress,
torture and many more.
The word “Goodbye” originally comes from an Old English phrase meaning
“god be with you”.
Etymologically, Great Britain means “great land of the tattooed”.
There are seven ways to spell the sound ‘ee’ in English. This sentence
contains all of them: “He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas”.
Many English words have changed their meaning over time – for example,
“awful” used to mean ‘inspiring wonder’ and was a short version of “full of
awe”, whereas ‘nice’ used to mean “silly”.
The first English dictionary was written in 1755.
The oldest English word that is still in use is “town”.
Interesting Facts about English
in no particular order...
The most common letter in English is "e".
The most common vowel in English is "e", followed by "a".
The most common consonant in English is "r", followed by "t".
Every syllable in English must have a vowel (sound). Not all syllables have
consonants.
Only two English words in current use end in "-gry". They are "angry" and
"hungry".
The word "bookkeeper" (along with its associate "bookkeeping") is the only
unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters. Other
such words, like "sweet-toothed", require a hyphen to be readily readable.
The word "triskaidekaphobia" means "extreme fear of the number 13". This
superstition is related to "paraskevidekatriaphobia", which means "fear of
Friday the 13th".
More English words begin with the letter "s" than with any other letter.
A preposition is always followed by a noun (i.e. noun, proper noun, pronoun,
noun group, gerund).
The word "uncopyrightable" is the longest English word in normal use that
contains no letter more than once.
A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a "pangram".
The following sentence contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: "The quick
brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." This sentence is often used to test
typewriters or keyboards.
The only word in English that ends with the letters "-mt" is "dreamt" (which
is a variant spelling of "dreamed") - as well of course as "undreamt" :)
A word formed by joining together parts of existing words is called a "blend"
(or, less commonly, a "portmanteau word"). Many new words enter the
English language in this way. Examples are "brunch" (breakfast + lunch);
"motel" (motorcar + hotel); and "guesstimate" (guess + estimate). Note that
blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form
when two whole words join together, for example: website, blackboard,
darkroom.
The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet:
alpha, bēta.
The dot over the letter "i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot".
In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound
sign, number sign.
In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".
If we place a comma before the word "and" at the end of a list, this is known
as an "Oxford comma" or a "serial comma". For example: "I drink coffee, tea,
and wine."
Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles),
binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas
(but note that clothing words often become singular when we use them as
modifiers, as in "trouser pocket").
The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. "I am."
The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat"
meaning "the king is helpless".
We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the
following sentence which 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."
The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
The only planet not named after a god is our own, Earth. The others are, in
order from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, [Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Neptune.
There are only 4 English words in common use ending in "-dous": hazardous,
horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
We can find 10 words in the 7-letter word "therein" without rearranging any
of its letters: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
The "QWERTY keyboard" gains its name from the fact that its first 6 letter
keys are Q, W, E, R, T and Y. On early typewriters the keys were arranged in
such a way as to minimize the clashing of the mechanical rods that carried
the letters.