• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

English language trivia fun

Incanus

Auror
Know any fun facts about English? Curious tidbits about language?

Here's a few:


--> The words with the most definitions: set (464 defs)

--> The word(s) with the most consecutive double-letters: bookkeeper, bookkeeping

--> And of course, everyone's favorite super-long word: antidisestablishmentarianism (this one is fun to say at speed)


The thing I love about that last word is how most of it is made up of prefixes and suffixes.

How about more? What language oddities have you come across?
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
My favorites are the ones we don't really know where they came from. Current favorite: jalopy

I also love prepositional phrases. Just grabbing one at random
cut up (in the sense of funny)
cut down
cut over
cut in (which is somewhat different from cut into)
cut out (which differs from cut that out)

but really you can play the game with lots of words. Prefixes and suffixes are also good fun. Even more fun in German, where you can pile words up like firewood.
 

La Volpe

Sage
Words containing the word "meow": meow, meows, meowed, meowing, homeowner

That is hilarious.

--

As for my contribution: The only ones I can think of is... Nothing rhymes with purple and orange, if I remember correctly. Also, not really a language thing, but apparently "orange" was a fruit before it was a colour. I.e. at some point in history, people could say, "Hey, hand me that red fruit over there. Yeah, the orange."

And my non-English contribution, in Afrikaans, the longest word that contains only vowels is "eeue-oue".
 

Incanus

Auror
Words containing the word "meow": meow, meows, meowed, meowing, homeowner

That's so great. Thanks for that, Ireth! Didn't see that one coming.

Is that your own observation, or something you've come across somewhere?


--> The longest word with only one vowel: strengths
 

SumnerH

Scribe
Common word with all the vowels in order exactly once, including y: facetiously (there are others, abstemiously probably being the next most common).
Longest word with only one vowel: strengths

Favorite etymology: preposterous :From Latin praeposterus (“with the hinder part before, reversed, inverted, perverted”), from prae (“before”) + posterus (“coming after”).
 

Incanus

Auror
Favorite etymology: preposterous :From Latin praeposterus (“with the hinder part before, reversed, inverted, perverted”), from prae (“before”) + posterus (“coming after”).

That's great and makes so much sense. That's my favorite etymology now too!
 
Top