English Facts

77 Facts about English

1 billion people speak English. That's 1 in every 7 on earth.
80% of information stored on all computers in the world is in English.
English words "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among
the most ancient, from thousands of years.
The longest
common English word
without vowels
is "rhythms".
A new word in English is created every 98 minutes.

89%
of people in Sweden speak English.
The word "bride" comes from an old proto-germanic word meaning "to cook".
The word "queue" is pronounced the same way when the last 4 letters are removed.

The word "mortgage" comes from a French word that means "death contract".
The concept behind the word "cool" might come from the African word "itutu", brought to America by slavery.
90% of everything written in English uses just 1,000 words.
"Time"
is the most
commonly used noun
in English.
There are more English words beginning with the letter "s" than with any other letter.
Nigeria has
more English speakers than the United Kingdom.
Screeched
is the longest English word with one syllable.
There are 24 different dialects of English in the US.
Until the 19th century, the English word for actors was "hypocrites."
The shortest
complete sentence in
the English language
is "Go".
Phrases in English such as "long time no see", "no go", and "no can do" come from literal translations of Chinese phrases.
"LOL" was formally recognized in 2011's update of the Oxford English Dictionary.

"IRONIC"
is the most commonly
misused word in English
says Dictionary.com.
The day
after tomorrow
is called
"Overmorrow."
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.
80%
of all written paragraphs in English feature the word "the."
Bald Eagles are so named because "balde" is an Old English word meaning "white."

Harry Potter books were translated from British to American English.
The verb "unfriend" dates back to 1659. It existed even earlier as a noun, as far back as 1275.
Understanding English actually hurts professional players of English scrabble. Some of the world's best Scrabble players are Thai and can't speak English.
The words 'idiot,' 'imbecile,' and 'moron' were originally medical categories for intellectual disability.

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

The phrase ‘Time Person of the Year' contains the first, second and third most commonly used nouns in English, in order.
"Hello" didn't become a greeting until the telephone arrived.
"Dreamt" and its derivatives are the only common English words that end in "mt."
Only one word in all of English has an X, Y, and Z in order: "Hydroxyzine."

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

The word "OK" originated in 1839 when a newspaper used it as a funny abbreviation of "oll korrect."
The English word "Callipygian" means having a beautiful ass.
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."

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

"Police police Police police police police Police police." is a valid sentence, since "police" is both a noun and a verb.
By the age of 20, a native English-speaking American knows 42,000 dictionary words.
The chemical name for titin, the world's largest known protein, is 189,819 letters long.

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

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

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

The word "rooster" was favored in the U.S. as a puritan alternative to "cock" after it had acquired the secondary sense "penis."
Noah Webster learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in the process of writing "An American Dictionary of the English Language."


Charles Boycott, an English land agent, was so hated by the community he became a verb.
"Goodbye" is a contraction of "God be with ye."

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

Horse-eating is called Hippophagy.
'Flabbergasted' was first recorded in a 1772 list of new words alongside 'bored'.

The names of the English rivers Avon, Axe, Esk, Exe and Ouse all mean ‘river' or ‘water' in various ancient languages.
The average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is of around 20,000 words.
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.
The word "Britain" is derived from "Pretain" meaning "painted", originally because the Britons had tattoos.

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


Yawning and stretching at the same time is called "pandiculating."
The 1989 article that proposed the acronym LOL also suggested using ‘H' to mean ‘Huh?'


The word "profane" comes from the Latin "profanus," meaning "outside the temple".
The old word for a kiss on the hand is "baisemain."

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.

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.
"Mouse potato" is someone who spends a lot of time at a computer.
There's a synonym
for the word
synonym
it's poecilonym.
"Kentish Fire" is a prolonged clapping by an audience, especially in unison, indicating impatience or disapproval.

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

English has 3,000 words for being drunk.
The term “checkmate” comes from the Arabic and ultimately Persian phrase “shah mat” which means “the king is dead.”

‘Cheesy' originally meant ‘excellent'.
A "flibbertigibbet" is a frivolous and flighty person who is excessively talkative.
The word "White" comes from the Indo-European root kweit meaning "to shine."
"Euouae" is the longest word in the English language which is made up of nothing but vowels.
"Whatever" is the most annoying word, a U.S. poll found in 2016 for the eight year in a row.