For my birthday my mom gave me a book titled The Book of Useless Information. love iiiit! It's the perfect subway book. Today I was reading about letters and all of these fun facts that are right up my alley. I will share them with you.
Did you know...
Rhythm and syzygy are the longest English words without vowels? I knew about rhythm but I did not know about syzygy. In fact, i question that it's even a real word. Because right now i'm thinking i can think of an even longer word with no vowels: jdhtfgwgdfscnbmhklxxxz.
Skepticisms is the longest typed word that alternates hands. Skepticisms. I had to type it again. Now that's just good fun.
The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of elements. Yes, i DID know that!
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is screeched. I really want to prove this wrong but I don't think I will. I spent a substantial amount of time on the train thinking about it though.
Certain sounds in the English language are real germ-spreaders, particularly the sounds F, P, T, D, and S. Very good to know, in light of this flu epidemic. I will try to refrain from using words containing those letters.
The only contemporary words that end with -gry are angry and hungry. I already knew that one. Plus one for Jen.
Only 3 world capitals start with the letter O in English: Otawwa, Canada; Oslo, Norway; [and perhaps the funnest capital of all,] Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Bookkeeper is the only word in the English language with three consecutive double letters. FUN.
Six words in the English language have the letter combination uu: muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate, duumvir, and residuum. Interesting. I think i'm going to start saying vaccum like vacu-um, as a diphthong. <-- also, what's up with that random h thrown in there? who said that was ok? i guess it's not thath random (<--HAHA, that was a totally accidental typo) if it's by a p. but it sounds random. zzzzz...even i have now lost interest. sorry.
Lastly:
Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. When i was in college the password for my login on the school website was a word that i typed using fingers starting from the outside of my right hand (so starting with my pinky) and going in order until ending with my left hand ring finger. It was fun. See if you can guess the word.
Word nerds unite!! i hope you liked this.
4 comments:
I guess I must be a word nerd because I found this post to be most fascinating. I didn't even know Burkina Faso was a country! Is that one new? Or did I just miss it in geography class?
I like how you brag about the useless information that you already know.
Having said that, this book would be right up my alley.
jen, thanks for all the useless information, i really appreciate it. now my brain will have to make room for it by kicking out something really important that i should remember but now can't. j/k, keep up the great blogs!
Ha. I totally knew the one about bookkeeper from reading an Encyclopedia Brown book in 2nd grade. I loved those books.
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