English Facts: 83 Facts about English ←FACTSlides→

1 billion people speak English. That's 1 in every 7 on earth.

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80% of information stored on all computers in the world is in English.

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English words "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among

the most ancient, from thousands of years.

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The longest

common English word

without vowels

is "rhythms".

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A new word in English is created every 98 minutes.

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89%

of people in Sweden speak English.

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The word "bride" comes from an old proto-germanic word meaning "to cook".

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The word "queue" is pronounced the same way when the last 4 letters are removed.

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The word "mortgage" comes from a French word that means "death contract".

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The concept behind the word "cool" might come from the African word "itutu", brought to America by slavery.

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90% of everything written in English uses just 1,000 words.

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"Time"

is the most

commonly used noun

in English.

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There are more English words beginning with the letter "s" than with any other letter.

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Nigeria has
more English speakers than the United Kingdom.

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Screeched

is the longest English word with one syllable.

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There are 24 different dialects of English in the US.

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Until the 19th century, the English word for actors was "hypocrites."

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The shortest

complete sentence in

the English language

is "Go".

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Phrases in English such as "long time no see", "no go", and "no can do" come from literal translations of Chinese phrases.

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"LOL" was formally recognized in 2011's update of the Oxford English Dictionary.

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"IRONIC"

is the most commonly

misused word in English

says Dictionary.com.

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The day

after tomorrow

is called

"Overmorrow."

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Today's British accent first appeared among London's upper class around the time of the American Revolution. Before that, the British accent was similar to that of Americans.

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80%

of all written paragraphs in English feature the word "the."

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Bald Eagles are so named because "balde" is an Old English word meaning "white."

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Harry Potter books were translated from British to American English.

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The verb "unfriend" dates back to 1659. It existed even earlier as a noun, as far back as 1275.

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Understanding English actually hurts professional players of English scrabble. Some of the world's best Scrabble players are Thai and can't speak English.

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The words 'idiot,' 'imbecile,' and 'moron' were originally medical categories for intellectual disability.

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Dr. Seuss was the first to publish the word "nerd."

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The phrase ‘Time Person of the Year' contains the first, second and third most commonly used nouns in English, in order.

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"Hello" didn't become a greeting until the telephone arrived.

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"Dreamt" and its derivatives are the only common English words that end in "mt."

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Only one word in all of English has an X, Y, and Z in order: "Hydroxyzine."

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The only English word with three "Y" is "syzygy," which happens to describe the alignment of 3 celestial bodies in a straight line.

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The word "OK" originated in 1839 when a newspaper used it as a funny abbreviation of "oll korrect."

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The English word "Callipygian" means having a beautiful ass.

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The sole term in English to begin with "tm" is "Tmesis," the insertion of words between a compound phrase, as in "what-so-ever" inserted in the middle of "whatever."

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Muscle comes from the Latin musculus, which means "little mouse," because a flexed muscle was thought to resemble a mouse.

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"Police police Police police police police Police police." is a valid sentence, since "police" is both a noun and a verb.

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By the age of 20, a native English-speaking American knows 42,000 dictionary words.

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The chemical name for titin, the world's largest known protein, is 189,819 letters long.

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The word ambisinistrous is the opposite of ambidextrous; it means ‘no good with either hand'.

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‘Bitch the pot' was 19th-century slang for ‘pour the tea'.

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"Rhinorrhea" is the medical condition otherwise known as a "runny nose."

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The word "rooster" was favored in the U.S. as a puritan alternative to "cock" after it had acquired the secondary sense "penis."

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Noah Webster learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in the process of writing "An American Dictionary of the English Language."

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Charles Boycott, an English land agent, was so hated by the community he became a verb.

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"Goodbye" is a contraction of "God be with ye."

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The phrase 'crocodile tears' refers to a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears of sadness when killing and consuming their prey.

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September is the ninth month and the only month with the same number of letters in its name in English as the number of the month.

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Horse-eating is called Hippophagy.

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'Flabbergasted' was first recorded in a 1772 list of new words alongside 'bored'.

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The names of the English rivers Avon, Axe, Esk, Exe and Ouse all mean ‘river' or ‘water' in various ancient languages.

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The average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is of around 20,000 words.

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The term "Hippie" is derived from the term "Hipster," which described jazz fans in the 1940's. Hipsters were known for pot smoking and sarcasm.

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The word "Britain" is derived from "Pretain" meaning "painted", originally because the Britons had tattoos.

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The term "sniper" comes from how hard it is to shoot the snipe bird.

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Jesus' name translated from Hebrew to English would be 'Joshua'. We get the name 'Jesus' by translating the Hebrew name to Greek to Latin to English.

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Yawning and stretching at the same time is called "pandiculating."

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The 1989 article that proposed the acronym LOL also suggested using ‘H' to mean ‘Huh?'

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The word "profane" comes from the Latin "profanus," meaning "outside the temple".

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The old word for a kiss on the hand is "baisemain."

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The word "quickie", which has sexual connotations today, began as a 1920s term for a film produced over the course of a mere two weeks.

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The word "cleavage" comes from geology. It refers to a separation between rocks or crystals. American movie censors adopted the term as a euphemism in 1940s.

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"Mouse potato" is someone who spends a lot of time at a computer.

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There's a synonym

for the word

synonym

it's poecilonym.

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"Kentish Fire" is a prolonged clapping by an audience, especially in unison, indicating impatience or disapproval.

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Data scientists analyzed 10,222 words to discover the "happiest" word in the English language. It's "laughter."

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Wasp used to be "waps," while bird used to be "brid" and horse used to be "hros." Pronunciation errors made the English language what it is today.

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English has 3,000 words for being drunk.

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The term “checkmate” comes from the Arabic and ultimately Persian phrase “shah mat” which means “the king is dead.”

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‘Cheesy' originally meant ‘excellent'.

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A "flibbertigibbet" is a frivolous and flighty person who is excessively talkative.

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The word "White" comes from the Indo-European root kweit meaning "to shine."

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"Euouae" is the longest word in the English language which is made up of nothing but vowels.

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"Whatever" is the most annoying word, a U.S. poll found in 2016 for the eight year in a row.

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The average English-speaker has about 50,000 words in their mind and finds the right one in 600 milliseconds.

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"Bird" was originally spelled "brid."

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The word ‘hundred' derives from ‘hundra' in Old Norse, which originally meant 120.

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‘Bumpsy' is 17th-century slang for ‘drunk'.

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770,000 people living in England cannot speak English well.

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Latin had about 800 obscene words; English has only about 20.

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English Facts 83 Facts about English

English Facts
83 Facts about English