Words |
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Orthography |
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| The longest common (i.e., likely to appear in an unabridged dictionary) word | "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (45)6; |
| The two longest one-syllable words in English | "screeched" (9)2, "strengths" (9)2. |
| words which contain all five (or six, if you append "ly") vowels in alphabetical order | "facetious"1, "abstemious"4, "annelidous"5, "arsenious"4 |
| words which contain all five vowels in reverse alphabetical order | "duoliteral"5, "subcontinental"5 "uncomplimentary"5 |
| words which contain the longest strings of consonants14 | "bergschrund" (6), "borschts" (6), "eschscholtzia" (6), "latchstring" (6), "weltschmerz" (6) |
| longest word with no repeated letters | "uncopyrightable" (15)4 |
| sentence containing seven spellings of the [i] ("ee") sound | "He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas." |
| sentence containing nine ways the combination "ough" can be pronounced | "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." |
| longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with left hand9 | "desegregated" (12), "desegregates" (12), "reverberated" (12), "reverberates" (12), "stewardesses" (12), "watercresses" (12) |
| longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with right hand10 | "homophony" (9), "homophyly" (9), "nonillion" (9), "pollinium" (9), "polyonomy" (9), "polyphony" (9) |
| longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with alternating hands11 | "dismantlement" (13) |
| longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard on the top row ("qwertyuiop")7 | "rupturewort" (11), "proterotype" (11) |
| longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard on the middle row ("asdfghjkl")8 | "alfalfas" (11), "hadassah" (11) |
Semantics |
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| words with two synonyms which are antonyms | "cleave" ("adhere" and "separate")4 |
| "cover" ("conceal" and "expose")13 | |
| "sanction" ("approve" and "prohibit" (colloquial))12 | |
| "transparent" ("hidden" (jargon) and "known" (jargon))15 | |
| "trim" ("garnish" and "prune")16 | |
| seemingly contradictory synonyms |
"flammable" and
"inflammable" "toxicant" and "intoxicant" |
| word describing the shape of the bubbles in beer foam | "orthotetrachidecahedrons"4 |
| origin of the word "checkmate" | Persian phrase "Shah Mat", which means "the king is dead".4 |
Statistics |
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Written Text |
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| Letter Frequency List | etaoinshrdlu17 |
| Letter Frequency | e(1/8)3. |
| 1 | according to ojo's memory. mail me at ojo@ojohaven.com for more info. |
| 2 | according to the Fun Fact site, quoting Michael Baraz. |
| 3 | according to the Fun Fact site, quoting 2201 Fascinating Facts. |
| 4 | according to an email i received from linguist Kate Jolie. |
| 5 | according to the A.Word.A.Day mailing list, run by Anu Garg. "arterious" doesn't occur in The Hypertext Webster Gateway. |
| 6 | Thanks to Brian Neil Burg (ENFJBri@aol.com) for correcting my spelling. |
| 7 |
Found in my "allwords.txt". Also found was
the 11-letter word "proprietory", which doesn't appear at Dictionary.com. |
| 8 |
Found in my "allwords.txt". Also found were
the 8-letter words "flagfall", "galagala", "galahads", and "haskalah", which don't appear in The Hypertext Webster Gateway. |
| 9 |
Found in my "allwords.txt". Also found were the 12-letter words "aftereffects", "decerebrated", "decerebrates", "extravastate", "gazetteerage", "reasseverate", "terracewards", and "tessaradecad" and the 13-letter words "aftercataract", "devertebrated", and "tesseradecade", which don't appear in The Hypertext Webster Gateway. |
| 10 |
Found in my "allwords.txt". Also found were the 9-letter words "hypophyll", "lupulinum", "minikinly", "monophony", "nipponium", "okupukupu", "philliloo", "philonium", "polyonymy", and "polyphyly", the 10-letter words "plynlymmon" and "polyphylly", the 11-letter words "hypolimnion", "hypophyllum", and "polyphonium", the 12-letter words "hypophyllium" and "miminypiminy", and the 13-letter word "phyllophyllin", which don't appear in The Hypertext Webster Gateway. |
| 11 |
Found in my "allwords.txt". Also found were
the 13-letter words "antiendowment", "antisudorific", "autotoxicosis", and "neurotoxicity", which don't appear in The Hypertext Webster Gateway. |
| 12 | According to an email i received from Rayle Nathaniel, Rayle.Nathaniel@pbgc.gov. Note that the "prohibit" sense of "sanction" is colloquial, grown from a "legal sanction" or "legal enforcement". |
| 13 | According to an email i received from Norton Starr, nstarr@amherst.edu. "expose" is synonymous with the meaning of "cover" used in the example, "the professor will cover the proof in class". |
| 14 | Found in my "allwords.txt". Also found were several other words containing 6 consecutive consonants. Several were German or UNIX terms. "archchronicler" and "birththroe" seemed valid, but don't appear in The Hypertext Webster Gateway, and Knightsbridge is a proper noun. |
| 15 | According to an email i received from Norton Starr, nstarr@amherst.edu. Both the "hidden" and "known" senses are jaron, listed in The Hypertext Webster Gateway thru the FOLDOC, Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. |
| 16 | Thanks to Barb Lord, blord@microsoft.com, for pointing this out. |
| 17 | Thanks to Mitch Silverstein, slvrstn@ix.netcom.com for pointing out my mistake (i had swapped the "a" and "o"). |