Fun Fridays – May 11, 2012
Word Trivia
“Stewardesses” and “reverberated” are the two longest (and commonly used) words (12 letters each) that can be typed with only the left hand.
“lollipop” is the longest word typed with your right hand.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
The sentence: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.
The words ‘racecar,’ ‘kayak’ and ‘level’ are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.” (a e i o u)
Typewriter is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
The only city whose name can be spelled completely with vowels is Aiea, Hawaii.
YOU SAID: There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.” (a e i o u)
Make them “abstemiously” and “facetiously” and you’ve got the old-school vowels. a e i o u and sometimes y. : )
This was a fun post for word-lovers!
I’m impressed! I’m still reeling with all the word trivia!
^ Nicely done
Kool.
education is also a word.. isnt it.
The five vowels in “education” are not in alphabetical order.
What a fun post. I’ve been to Aiea, Hawaii. I love palindromes. When I used to substitute teach, I made a game of having students think of as many palindromes as they could.
Nothing rhymes with Gagne, either. Thank you, SportsCenter commercials, for that bit of trivia.
This was fun! But, dude, like, what’s a typewriter?
I love this post!
I look for palindromes in the serial numbers of paper money. Numismatists refer to these bills as “radar notes”.
I’m shaking my head that “humongous” wasn’t listed as one of the official “ous” words. It’s even listed on my Dictionary.com iphone app. When will the academic world wake up? (*wink)
That’s probably because it’s words that end in “Dous” not “Ous”.
LOL Yup, you caught me sleeping. Thanks.
dous* not ous
“The quick brown fox…” gave me flashbacks to high school typing class — which wasn’t so fun — but the rest of the trivia does indeed qualify as “fun.”
Thank you — and happy Friday!
“No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple”
Curple rhymes with purple. It’s a word used regularly in equestrian circles, it’s a strap under the girth of a horse’s saddle to stop it from slipping forward, some riders also use it to refer to the hindquarters or the rump of a horse.
I have to dispute that it is ‘regularly’ used. I rode for 10+ years growing up, and competed in national level equestrian events, without ever hearing that word.
Ditto. I rode, competed and had friends who did the same and I have never heard the word “curple”. I did google it and its defined almost word for word as you put it- I also don’t know that I’ve ever seen any strap that was under the girth. The only thing that comes to mind is possibly a rear cinch?
The only noun in the English language that ends in “ic” is chiropractic.
Actually I have no idea if that’s true. But I can’t think of any others!
A mystic: n. – One given to mysticism; one who holds mystical views, interpretations, etc.; especially, in ecclesiastical history, one who professed mysticism.
Magnetic: n. – Any metal, as iron, nickel, cobalt, etc., which may receive, by any means, the properties of the loadstone, and which then, when suspended, fixes itself in the direction of a magnetic meridian
Yeah but those words suck.
picnic
comic
epic and topic -also
transgenic, scenic, pathetic, telepathic, ceramic, apologetic, semantic, pedantic, epileptic, septic, hectic, automatic, somatic, democratic, republic, skeptic, pessimistic, optimistic, simplistic, sarcastic, spastic, politic, comic, polemic, stoic, magic, tragic
That’s all I can think of, you could probably find more in the dictionary or online.
He said nouns.
He’s still wrong, but not THAT wrong.
I think ‘critic’ is also there.
Democratic, Systematic and Tic Tac.
therapeutic…
psychic
… seriously? that’s all you could think of?
pathetIC.
1. There are more than four words that end in dous:
phyllocladous – Adj. – Having phylloclades.
jeopardous – Adj: perilous; dangerous; hazardous; risky.
2. Another word with vowels in order: arsenious
3. Other ten letter words using one row: pepperroot, pepperwort, perpetuity, pewterwort, pirouetter, prerequire, pretorture, proprietor, repertoire, repetitory, tetterwort
You left out extrapidous – Adj. – Having the propensity to make up fake words in an effort to look smart.
Most of those words aren’t worthy of any skepticism. Either way, I don’t think that poster is implying that he thought of the words. I’m sure he used a search engine.
How funny, I go to Aiea all the time and that never occurred to me. I think my other favorite town name here would be Ka’a'awa. (kah-ah-ah-vah)
My favorite word to type is “pleasing”, because it uses all eight fingers exactly once. In fact, I often find myself tapping out the pattern of that word on tables and desks as though they were keyboards. pleasingpleasingpleasingpleasingpleasing.
All non-binary acids that include compounds ending in “ite” end in “ous”.
You state there are only four words ending with “dous”. You are incorrect. One more I can think of off the top is stupendous.
Stupendous is in there already…
@Mick – you are very funny! Thanks for the laugh
Sporange rhymes with orange: In botany, the case or sac in plants in which the spores, which are equivalent to the seeds of flowering plants, are produced or carried. Also sporangium.
A sentence that uses all of the letters of the alphabet that is slightly shorter than ‘the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ is ‘jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz’
apodous
hazardous
horrendous
iodous
iridous
jeopardous
macropodous
molybdous
palladous
phyllocladous
podous
stupendous
tremendous
vanadous
A jiffy is not 1/100 of a second, no matter who you talk to. In physics it’s 3e-24 seconds (or, in one proposal, the Planck time or 5.4e-44 seconds); in computer science it’s one tick of a system timer interrupt, which is variable, but on Linux machines tends to be about .004 seconds; in alternating current a jiffy is the time between AC power cycles, and again it is variable, but it tends to be about 1/60 or 1/50 of a second, and the “original” definition of a jiffy (as in, the first time someone tried to give it a formal definition, rather than just “a short amount of time”) was 3.33564e-11 seconds.
Two additional palindromes are radar and madam.
One more palindrome: detartrated.
That’s longer than the single word palindrome that I previously believed was the longest, “redivider.”
1. The duration of one tick of the computer’s system clock. Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the US and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common.
Author and critic are correct.
Great trivia! Strange can rhyme with Orange.
That’s pretty neat!
“Bookkeeper” is the only word that contains three sets of double letters in a row.
…and bookkeeping
Silver and river
“taxiing” and “skiing” are the only 2 words in the English language with a double i
(as far as I know)
excellent post, I loved it
What about Hawaii?
Are “vacuum” and its derivatives the only words with a double u?
After reading the
the sentence, you are
now aware that the
the human brain
often does not
inform you that the
the word “the”
has been repeated twice
every time
SHORT CUTS: I is the shortest word in the English language and that is because it is used the most. “I” is also the meaning of life because life has no meaning, without you in it. The sentence; “I is the meaning of life” translates into “I am the meaning of life”. Life doesn’t come with a meaning, I will have to add that to it myself.
Fun post! I love trivia like this, makes you think!
In my line of work it is an oft-used word … and it is twelve letters typed only with the left hand: breastfeeder
Love this. Now I know …
wondrous is in the oxford dictionary..
River does not rhyme perfectly with Silver. It’s a pararhyme, or half rhyme. Same with Strange and Orange. It’s to do with vowels and syllables and the way they sound.
I think treating the word ‘reverberated’ as left-handed word is 100% correct. In general bottom line left handed are ZXCV only and B as right handed on qwerty key board. A great TRIVIA!
Actually, Oia, (on the island of Santorini in Greece) can also be spelled only in vowels.
“Granth,” as in Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy text, is pronounced to rhyme with month, but some fun little facts
“A man, a plan, a canal, panama!” is the longest palindrome I know.
Then you need to read “This Is A Book” by Demetri Martin. He has a short story palindrome.
In LA, the street Figueroa has all the vowels, although not in order. and it’s damn hard to spell!
Cleave is its own antonym. Are there any others?