Twenty-two fascinating fact about the English Language

How many of these did you already know??

1. The most commonly used letter is E.
2. The least used letter is Q.
3. Skiing is the only word with double i.
4. Dreamt is the only word that ends in 'mt.'
5. There are only 4 words which end in 'dous': hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
6. 'Bookkeeper' and 'bookkeeping' are the only 2 words with three consecutive double letters.
7. The word 'strengths' is the longest word with just one vowel.
8. The word 'testify' derived from a time when men were required to swear on their testicles. (fr. Latin, 'testis').
9. All pilots on international flights identify themselves in English regardless of their country of origin.
10. The word 'almost' is the longest with all the letters in alphabetical order.
11. The most commonly used word in conversation is 'I'.
12. Defenselessness and Respectlessness are both fifteen-letter words with only one of the vowels.
13. RHYTHMS is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, u.
14. Excluding derivatives there are only two words in English that end with -shion. They are CUSHION and FASHION.
15. 12 words can be formed from the word “THEREIN” using consecutive letters: The, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, and herein.
16. There is only one common word in English that has 5 vowels in a row – QUEUEING.
17. “One thousand” contains the letter ‘A’. None of the words from one to nine hundred and ninety nine has an A.
18. Two words having all the vowels in the reverse order are SUBCONTINENTAL and UNCOMPLIMENTARY.
19. These are the only six-letter words that begin and end with same vowel and there is no other vowel in between: Asthma and Isthmi.
20. The longest English word is a 45-letter word which is the name of a disease: “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”
21. A superlatively long word of 27 letters having 13 vowels which alternates consonants and vowels: HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS. Some more examples are Antidisestablishmentarianism and Electrophotomicrographically.
22. UNDERGROUND and UNDERFUND are the only words in English that begin and end with the letters “und”.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.