The English language

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, or purple.
“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt.”
There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
If you’re interested in the English language, I recommend this book.


2 Comments

  • Nick

    If you’re interested in the English language, I recommend Port Out, Starboard Home, by Michael Quinion, linguist and webmaster of World Wide Words. After an inconclusive discussion of the derivation of the word posh, Quinion concludes:

    “Whatever its source, it looks from the evidence that posh in the modern sense was at first a military slang term of the First World War. Its first appearance is in the magazine Punch in September 1918, in whch an RAF officer is saying to his mother, ‘Oh, yes, Mater, we had a posh time of it down there’; the verbal phrase to posh up, to make oneself smart, is of the same period.

    Nick

  • Roger Darlington

    Yes, I have this book, Nick – very interesting and informative.