You don’t have to look very far to find some real quirks in the English language.
Here are fifteen of our favorites:
- Rhythms is the longest English word without containing the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.
- 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.
- There is only one commonly used word in the English language that has five vowels in a row: queueing.
- Almost is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order. (Cool, huh?)
- One thousand contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.
- Cwm (pronounced “koom,” defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which w is the nucleus vowel, as is crwth (pronounced “krooth,” a type of stringed instrument).
- Asthma and isthmi are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.
- Underground and underfund are the only words in the English language that begin and end with the letters “und.”
- Stewardesses is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand. Try it!
- Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt.”
- The insanely long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels.
- The two longest words with only one of the six vowels (including y) are the 15-letter mega-words defenselessness and respectlessness.
- Forty is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. One is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.
- Bookkeeper is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.
- Ough can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.”
Source: ListVerse