15 Top Mind-blowing facts about the English language

Anza Akram

Smart Brains Spotlight

You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?

The topic for today is “15 Top Mind-blowing facts about the English language“.

Learning should be for life. Every moment of every day we are being presented with new and important lessons.

Here we will present you one handpicked new and important lesson every day from smart brains and experts around the world.

Today we learned about “15 Top Mind-blowing facts about the English language“.  Let Anza Akram shares with you top 15 mind-blowing interesting trivia and facts about the English Language which you probably didn’t know already.

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MA Junah June Baquilar

Smart Brains Spotlight Selection

15 Top Mind-blowing facts about the English language | Anza Akram

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15 Top Mind-blowing facts about the English language

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15 Top Mind-blowing and Amazing facts about the English language

Answer by Anza Akram, ( Studied Bachelor of Science in Computer Science). All credit goes to  Anza Akram Thank you!

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   The English language is the only language in the world that capitalises the word ‘I’. Importance of self is very prominent in the English language.

The longest word in the English language is “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” and the second longest is “hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia”.

“I am/go” is the shortest complete sentence in the English Language.

The word “Uncopyrightable” is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.

Only 3 words in the English language end in ‘ceed’: proceed, succeed and exceed.

The dot on the top of the letter ‘i’ is called a “tittle”.

There are more English words beginning with the letter ‘S’ than with any other letter.

The word “Bookkeeper” and “Bookkeeping” are the only 2 words in the English language with 3 consecutive sets of double letters.

‘Sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick’ is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.

Of all the words in the English language, the word “set” has the most definitions.

Approximately, one new word is added to the English language every two hours.

“Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters ‘Und’.

In numbers, there are no “Bs” until “billion”. It’s hard to believe, but if you wrote out every single number in order, you wouldn’t use the letter “B” until you reached the word “billion”. There isn’t a single “B” in the first 999,999,999 numbers in English. Also, there is no letter A in any number until 1,000 (one thousand).

English is the language of the air. This means that all pilots have to identify themselves and speak in English while flying, regardless of their origin.

The English language has been developing for more than 1,400 years.

Reference: Anza Akram. “What are some mind-blowing facts about the English language?” originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

More Amazing and Top Mind-blowing facts about the English language

Ghost words

There are “ghost words” that mean nothing.

There are some words that appeared in the dictionary because of printing errors. The nonexistent word “dord” appeared in the dictionary for eight years in the mid-20th century. It became known as a “ghost word.”

Thank you, @muhasib – Busy.org – Busy is an Open-Source social network and communication platform that extends itself to a variety of rich features and functionality including free digital payments and a marketplace for goods and services.

Day after tomorrow

Can you believe that there is a word in the English language for “Day after tomorrow”?

It was “Overmorrow” and was never used.

The word Overmorrow has been listed in 1913 Webster but not in 1828 Webster. Many other dictionaries do not even list this word at all.

Thank you, mythgyaan – Mythgyaan – Explore and Learn about Everything.

There’s a reason for the “R” in “Mrs.”

“Mrs.” wasn’t always the abbreviation used for a married woman. Centuries ago it stood for “mistress,” which at the time meant the woman of the household. But the abbreviation stuck, even as the title for married women changed to a word without an R in it: “missus.”

Thank you, Readers Digest – Enrich your life with inspiring stories and useful advice on health, weight loss, food, home, travel and more.

Shakespeare invented half the words he used

OK, not half, but a lot. “Assassinate,” “besmirch,” “impartial,” “worthless,” “grovel,” “mimic,” “noiseless”—all these and more didn’t exist before Shakespeare decided to lump them together for the sake of fitting his iambic pentameter. Thanks a lot, Shakespeare, for besmirching the dignity of our mother tongue.

Thank you, PR Daily – PR Daily is a news site that delivers news, advice, and opinions on the public relations, marketing, social media, and media worlds.

SOS doesn’t “stand” for Save Our Souls or Save Our Ships

Backronyms, on the other hand, are cases where an acronym or abbreviation can be squeezed into an already existing word, either to make the name more memorable or create a fun explanation for it. “SOS” is one of these. Rather than stand for “save our souls,” SOS was chosen because its letters were easily transmitted and recognized in Morse code. It wasn’t until later that folks decided “save our souls” filled the abbreviation out neatly. 

Thank you, Distractify – Distractify specializes in content that sparks conversations around news, entertainment and pop culture.

An Infant is not a baby

The English word ‘infant’ comes from the Latin word ‘infans’, meaning “unable to speak” or “speechless.”

Thank you, The Proficients – An English Training Institute Bhopal | Spoken English classes in Bhopal | English classes in Bhopal | Speaking English in Bhopal.

  Use Past tenses to talk about the present or future

Did you know, we can use past tenses to talk about the present or future:

• I wish you were here with me now.
• If only I was wealthy.
• If I won a million dollars, I would give it all to you.

Thank you, Mighty Mantra – Mighty Mantra ‘Accent’ is an edutainment center for the youth of 21st century, where people learn to soar in the sky. The platform allows you access to the recent updations in the global scenario and helps you get connected to the main stream of the world.

Shakespeare created the future tense

This is hard to imagine but before William Shakespeare, there was no future tense. Time in that period of history was divided in two: past and present. This was the case not only for English but every other language up until that point.

The main reason for this was that in ages past, life was very hard. Hopes for the future were slim or non-existent and people did not dwell on it.

Shakespeare, however, was the first person in history to have both hope and a way to express it: i.e. through his writings. He created the future tense and then, when trying to think of a word to use for it, decided to use his own name. At first, people were confused at this new word will, but Shakespeare cleverly always used it with a future time phrase and soon people accepted the new word and the idea of the future. Eventually, many other languages noticed this and formed their own future tenses.

Thank you, The Green-Walled Tower – A fiction blog of funny and dark stories

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