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Crap
About Words
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The following
are all of the Weekly Droppings that have appeared on
Mindless Crap, dating back to the first one posted on
December 1, 2001.
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One thousand words make up 90% of common speech. |
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A spoonerism is the transposition of usually initial
sounds in a pair of words.
An example would be when you get your tang tongueled, your
mords wixed and you can't stalk traight. (You get your
tongue tangled, your words mixed and you can't talk
straight). |
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The three consecutive periods you see in sentences (...) are
called ellipses. |
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"Facetious" and "abstemious" are the only two words in the
English language that contain the vowels a, e, i, o, and u
in their proper order. |
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Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable. |
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The only city whose name can be spelled completely with
vowels is Aiea, Hawaii. |
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| Pancreaticoduodenostomy is the longest word with all
six vowels in order. |
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"Journal" does not contain a single letter of the Latin
word from which it is derived: dies (day). |
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| Angsts is the shortest word with 5
consonants in a row. |
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| The only word which can be typed using the bottom row of letters is
ZZZ (to indicate sleeping), which is found in at
least one dictionary. There are no vowels in the bottom row. |
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The only word in the English language with four
vowels in a row is "queuing." |
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The words CHOICE COD reads the same when held in
front of a mirror upside-down. |
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The shortest word with all five vowels in
alphabetical order is aerious (7 letters), meaning
"airy." |
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| SOS,
by the band ABBA, is the only palindromic name
of a song and band to become a hit. |
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| Magenta, the red-purple dye and color, was
created shortly after the battle of Magenta in
northern Italy. The conflict was so bloody that
French chemists synthesized the color shortly after
the battle and named it after the city because it
resembled the color of blood. |
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| The word "million" didn't exist until
around 1300. Until then, the largest number word
was "myriad," which was Greek for 10,000. |
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| Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed
using only the left hand. |
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| The act of snapping your fingers has a name:
fillip. |
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| Officially, the term "boulder" is
applied only to stones larger than 10 inches in
diameter. |
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| A spremologer collects trivia. |
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| The slanted line that divides dates, fractions,
choices, etc. (6/1/04) is called a virgule. |
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| All
the world's main alphabets have developed
from an alphabet invented 3,600 years ago in the
Middle East. It was known as the North Semitic
Alphabet. |
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| The word "queue" is the only word in
the English language that is still pronounced the same
way when the last four letters are removed. |
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| Widow is the only female form in the English
language that is shorter than its corresponding male term (widower). |
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| Unprosperousness is the longest word in which
every letter occurs at least twice. |
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| The
Ouija board got its name from the combination of the
French and German words for "yes" - oui and
ja. |
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| Underfund
and underground are the only two English words which
start and finish with "und." |
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| According
to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Finnish
word SAIPPUAKIVIKAUPPIAS - a soapstone seller - is the
longest known palindrome in any language. |
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| The
longest word in the dictionary with only one vowel is
"STRENGTHS." |
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| Subbookkeeper
is the only word with four pairs of double letters in
a row. |
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"THEREIN"
is a seven-letter word that contains thirteen words
spelled using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er,
here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein. |
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Bibliomancy is
the practice by some people of opening the Bible at
random and being guided for the day by whatever verse
they see first. |
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| There are only two
sequences of four consecutive letters that can be found
in the English language: "rstu" and "mnop."
Examples of each are understudy and gymnophobia. |
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| The shortest "-ology"
(study of) word is oology, the study of eggs. |
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Q is the only letter that does not appear in
the names of any state of the Unites States. |
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| Pierre, the capital
of South Dakota, is the only state capital name that
shares no letters with the name of its state. |
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| Monday
is the only day of the week that has an anagram, dynamo. |
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"One thousand"
contains the letter A, but none of the words from one
to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A. |
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SWIMS is the longest word with 180-degree rotational
symmetry (if you were to view it upside-down it would
still be the same word and perfectly readable). |
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Hydroxyzine (a prescription drug) is the longest
containing "x-y-z" in exact order. Next
in line line is xyzzors, a scientific name for a nematode
worm in biology. |
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The three-syllable word "hideous,"
with the change of a single consonant, becomes a two-syllable
word with no vowel sounds in common: "hideout." |
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Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the longest word
consisting entirely of alternating vowels and consonants. |
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| A googol is a 1
followed by 100 zeros. Mathematician Edward Kasner
supposedly asked his nephew Milton Sirotta to suggest
a name for the number, and he came up with this word. |
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"Tautonyms" are scientific names
for which the genus and species are the same. |
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| The
longest word in the Oxford dictionary is "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis."
It has 45 letters. |
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| In German, "eins"
and "acht" are the only numbers with their
letters in alphabetical order. |
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| The
word "earthling" was first found in
print in 1593. |
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| "Conservationalists"
& "Conversationalists" (18 letters) are
the longest non-scientific transposals (word formed
from another by changing its letters). |
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| The
only countries in the world with one syllable in their
names are Chad, France, Greece, and Spain. |
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| "Four"
is the only number whose number of letters in the name
equals the number. |
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| "Asthma"
and "isthmi" are the only six-letter words
that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels
between. |
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| "Fickleheaded"
and "fiddledeedee" are the longest words consisting
only of letters in the first half of the alphabet. |
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| "Adcomsubordcomphibspac"
is the longest acronym. It is a Navy term standing for
Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet
Subordinate Command. |
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| "Forty"
is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical
order. "One" is the only number with its letters
in reverse alphabetical order. |
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| "Dreamt"
is the only common English word ending in -MT.
Others are the obscure "adreamt," "redreamt,"
"undreamt," or "daydreamt." |
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| If
all numbers are arranged in alphabetical order, "eight"
would be the first number. "Zero" would
be the last number. |
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| Among words consisting
only of Roman numeral letters, the "highest scoring"
words in English are MIMIC (2,102) and IMMIX (2012). |
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