Many cultures find that English might possibly be one of the most difficult languages to learn. Not, in fact, for its words, but for the fact that it has so many unusual and contradictory rules. Just looking over an English study book will tell you that so many odd ifs and buts apply to so many words that it is enough to drive one crazy. Here are 25 examples of the oddities in the English language.
Oddities 21 – 25
25. “Rhythms” is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.
24. Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end -shion and (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion.
23. “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.
22. There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: queueing.
21. Soupspoons is the longest word that consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet.
Oddities 16 – 20
20. “Almost” is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
19. The longest uncommon word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops (a grass genus).
18. The longest common single-word palindromes are deified, racecar, repaper, reviver, and rotator.
17. “One thousand” contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.
16. “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.
Oddities 11 – 15
15. 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). Despite their origins in Welsh, they are accepted English words.
14. “Asthma” and “isthmi” are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.
13. The nine-word sequence I, in, sin, sing, sting, string, staring, starting (or starling), startling can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word.
12. “Underground” and “underfund” are the only words in the English language that begin and end with the letters “und.”
11. “Stewardesses” is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.
Oddities 6 – 10
10. Antidisestablishmentarianism listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question ‘What is the longest English word?’.
9. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
8. There are many words that feature all five regular vowels in alphabetical order, the commonest being abstemious, adventitious, facetious.
7. The superlatively long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels.
6. “Fickleheaded” and “fiddledeedee” are the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet.
Oddities 1 – 5
5. The two longest words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defenselessness and respectlessness.
4. “Forty” is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. “One” is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.
3. Bookkeeper is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.
2. Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are the only ones.
1. “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.
Hey, there are words that rhyme with Orange and Silver…
Orange – syringe Silver – River, liver
Screech is the longest monosyllabic word in the english language apparently.
Also, underneath and underwhelmed.
And silver doesn’t rhyme with river or liver.
they’d have to be rilver or lilver.
Why is ‘abbreviation’ such along word?
and why is there a d in ‘fridge’ but not in ‘refrigerator’?
PirateXxEsque: Well, ‘screeched’ is monosyllabic.
Double: Yes — & ‘monosyllable’ has 5 syllables. My favourite abbreviation is ’4WD’, which has more syllables than ’4-wheel drive’…
There is too a word that rhymes with purple. How about:
Roses are red, and violets are purple,
sugar is sweet, and so is maple syrple.
I’m surprised this isn’t on the list because it is on the “20 weird English words” list.
floccinaucinihilipilification is the longest word in the English language with no e’s.
In answer to whispers, there are two words in the English language that rhyme with purple. One is kurple, which is the bit of a saddle that goes under a horse’s tail, also known as a crup, and the other is hurple, which means to walk along dragging one foot behind you. I’m not sure I have the spellings correct, but they both rhyme with purple, and are both genuine words, if not commonly used.
“strengths” is also monosyllabic
and “www” has three times the syllables of World Wide Web
From the *real* Anon, who is standing up:
www
WHY? WHY? WHY?
do some of us have to put up with this continuing takeover of our original LV identities, often only discovered by chance, as I have noticed 129 now.
129. You don’t seem to be interacting with me or my comments in any way. Are you simply unaware you’re using my identity, or is there some particular reason?
segue – There are very good phonological reasons (which I don’t understand, but I know that they exist) why a monosyllable in English can be no longer than cccvccc, and that the first and last letters of that pattern have to be “s”. I once made a list of about 5 or 6 words to use as a pronuncation exercise, which I now can’t find. “Strengths” is *written* longer, because the phonemes “ng” and “th” are both written with two letters.
One book claims that “squirrelled” is the longest monosyllable, and one American I knew seriously contended that it was, but as far as I know anything about English phonology, “squir-relled” is two syllables. It may be *pronounced* close to one syllable in some accents, but phonologically it is two syllables. (BTW, in Korean, “Seoul” is two syllables, but even they pronounce it as one.)
As far as I know, the longest consonant cluster in English is 4 – texts, which is written as three letters “xts”, but is pronounced as four sounds “ksts”.
Korean doesn’t use consonant clusters, so English words written in Korean letters, and Koreans’ pronunciation of those words, always come out rather strangely.
Every continent begins and ends with the same letter barring the words, North or South.
The letter W is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn’t have 1 syllable… it has three.
There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
The oldest word in the English language is “town”
That’s enough for now. Oh, where did the word Posh come from? wptexas@austin.rr.com
There is an Olde English word which rhymes with Silver. Chilver, meaning some sort of baby lamb or breeding lamb.
Very good list.
You number three is wrong. Sorry. There is another. Bookkeeping, subbookkeeper (which is, rarest of rare, the ONLY word with FOUR sequential double letters) all are words; though whether delineations of a word count is tricky. They are, however, separate words, with their own definitions.
There are also ‘sweettoothed’ ‘hooffooted’ and ‘tattooee’ (one who is being worked upon by a tattooist).
There are a number of words ‘invented’ much like pneuminoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconiosis to satisfy a word puzzle. Such as Fishhookkeeper and Raccoonnkkeeper.
One dictionary (Webster’s, maybe ’72?) also has listed ‘”Oooooo” [int.] “an expression of surprise, delight or wonder”‘
Just thought I’d mention it.
Hinge rhymes with orange. Ha.
English is not my first language (but I had no problems learning it, Norwegian is said to be harder),
but the weirdest I’ve come across is that you have a word for throwing a
person or thing out of a window — defenestrate
Racecar is a single word palindrome…? Does this mean that the words race and car are no longer allowed outside alone?
for point #2, i read somewhere that anhungry is a word that means not hungry.
“85. jfrater – December 7th, 2007 at 1:53 am
TinyBabe: I say Scar-bruh – I guess the extra vowel has come from the Simon and Garfunkel song in which they say “scar-bu-ruh fair”.
I say ‘Scar-buhruh’, but the ‘buh’ is very short. Also (because I’m a pedantic little sod and can’t resist :p) Scarborough Fair is a trad. folk song that Simon and Garfunkel borrowed (as folk singers do) from English folk singer Martin Carthy, using his interpretation of the melody and lyrics … and, presumably, his pronunciation of Scarborough (because he gives it three syllables too).
Ooh, I just found a source that says it’s ‘buhruh’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A19773499 . They say that’s how Edinburgh should be pronounced as well, though, and I don’t.
Actually the hardest tongue twister was invented by myself after discovering some rubbing marks on the rear wheel of my car. So it is indeed “REAR WHEEL.” Sounds simple but trust me you’ll start to say weird stuff.
And also monosyllabic…how about “knights”?
Uncopywritable. . .anyone know whats so special about this one? (sorry if it was already mentioned)
Wait, it should read “uncopyrightable”. I misspelled it.
Wow. I didn’t think there were so many weird things in the english language..
Comment 103: “yoda is scottish?”
Hahaha Classic! i’m still laughing over that one, i recommend people go back and read it along with the comment above it.
“A man a plan a c***** panama”
is another palindrome
@ rafterman: 1 of each vowel
68. shaunism – December 4th, 2007 at 11:08 am
“I think the hardest tongue-twister is this: try saying “toy boat” five times in a row – it’s impossible!”
Try saying ‘quick trip’, repeated as fast as possible. I can’t even make it to the 2nd repetition.
And this page has been a fascinating lost hour of my life. Thanks!
Nope, uncopyrightable is the longest English word that doesn’t repeat any letters.
The four engineers wore
Orange brassieres
segue in particular and anyone else in general. I’m not quite sure where to put this, so I may as well put it here.
Yesterday I bought “The know-it-all; one man’s humble quest to become the smartest person in the world”, by AJ Jacobs, in which he sets out to read the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica, and find some use for all that knowledge in his daily life.
segue gets a mention. He says:
“Reading the Britannica is like channel surfing on a very highbrow cable system … The changes are so abrupt and relentless, you can’t help but get mental whiplash. You go from depressing to uplifting, from tiny to cosmic, from ancient to modern. There’s no segue, no local news anchor to tell you, “And now, on the lighter side.” Just a little white space, and boom …”
Where are you when he needs you?
You may be interested to know that the first edition of the Encyclopeadia describes your part of the world as “California is a large country of the West Indies. It is uncertain whether it be a peninsula or an island”. They didn’t have Google Earth in those days.
I was reading this over dinner with my wife’s friends yesterday. (They were speaking Korean. Non-stop.) Regular guffaws from me led them to ask what my book was about. I couldn’t explain “encyclopaedia”. None of the them knew the English word and I didn’t know the Korean word. (I do now; I looked it up when I got home. It’s “baek-gwa sa-jeon”. I am likely to remember that for about hmmm 2 minutes.)
Unfortunately my wife is not given to the sort of fact-let swapping that some of the people here are. Or she might be in Korean, but her English isn’t good enough to do it in English.
astraya, too bad he wasn’t reading it at the same time I was, I would have been glad to help.
I’m surprised no one has identified…
the shortest word with all five vowels (sequoia)
a word with four consecutive vowels each appearing just once (sequoia)
the longest word with only a single consonant (eerie)
a word with all six vowels appearing once each and in alphabetical order (facetiously)
I havn’t read all the comments, but how about the word balloonneer?
The month “September” has exactly nine letters and is also the ninth month on the calendar — no other month does this trick.
I always wanted to know why we ‘drive’ on a parkway and ‘park’ on a driveway … and why we cut a tree DOWN only to cut it UP again?
156. FrOgQueEn: Somebody has been reading Richard Lederer.
Re: 156. FrOgQueEn: Parkways got their names from a simpler time. I believe the first one was the Bronx River Parkway in, you guessed it, The Bronx, NY. The original idea wasn’t for commuter arteries, but as a pleasant meander through the park at the weekend in the new(ish) and novel automobile. Nice idea, but flawed, much like the indoor mall’s creator who envisioned it as a way to get Americans out of their cars and interacting a la a European market.
Did you know… that unravel and ravel mean exactly the same thing? They both mean to come apart. You’d think that ravel would mean to like… ravel something together, I suppose, but no. Ravel means it’s coming apart, as though you were pulling threads out. O_o
re # 18
rotavator is longer.
It’s a gardening tool
with the tendency for some people to claim that all that is difficult or complex (cosmology, evolution, biology, intelligence) has to be made by god, I’m surprised that nobody claims god’s responsibility for those oddities.
12. what about the word underbound?
162. BloodSuckingLeech: I’m sure “underbound” is rarely used in commonplace conversation, but it does have a genuine use.
sorry, hit submit before I meant to, then had to do something and time just flew…was going to add congratulations on knowing such an exoteric word.
Segue: was thinking more erotic as in: “I’d better tighten those restraints, he looks a little underbound to me”
BloodSuckingLeech: LOL! I’ll never look at that word the same way again!
“pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” is not the longest word in English. Since it’s invention it’s the longest in many other languages too.
It’s a pity that they didn’t create something pronounceable and shorter.
‘Cwm’ actually means valley, or it does in modern usage anyway. (This is coming from a Welsh bloke who speaks the language, and in any case, lives in one: Cwm Rhondda, the Rhondda Valley.) By the way, Welsh thrashes English for long words. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychchwyrndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch is one of them (you may be interested to know that that isn’t a quadruple ‘L’, it’s a double ‘LL’). There’s a train station in Ceredigion that was, I’m pretty sure, deliberately named just to one-up Llanfairpwll: it’s called Gorsafawddacha’idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion, but I reckon that one doesn’t count because it’s got an apostrophe in it. Cheaters.
There’s also that hill in New Zealand, with the impossibly long Maori name of Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. Those of you who used to collect Bionicle (or still do) will recognise some familiar names in there.
Antidisestablishmentarianism can be extended quite a bit more if you throw on a few more suffices: the longest I’ve managed to make it so far is antidisestablishmentarianisationablophobiac, i.e. one who is irrationally afraid of things that could potentially be made antidisestablishmentarian. Of course, you can have pneumoconiosisophobiacs, and so on…
And for all your palindrome needs, check out the song ‘Bob’ by Weird Al Yankovic.
My father used to get us to spell
WOOLLOOMOOLLOO
which is in the middle of Sydney, Australia.
As you can see it has two sets of three double letters.
“Month” doesn’t rhyme with any other word in english either…correct me if I’m wrong..
I just got this in my mailbox yet it’s not posted here:
There is a new comment on the post “25 English Language Oddities”.
http://listverse.com/literature/25-english-language-oddities/
Author: YOUR MOM
Comment:
you’re gay
171. BloodSuckingLeech: It most likely was deleted due to content.
oops
This isn’t so much a list of oddities, as a list of words, and thier letters’ order.
I mean, yes, they are oddities, but they don’t have a lot to do with English being difficult. (Except for a few, like the ‘-tion, -shion, fashion, cushion’ one.)
I’m interested to note, as a student of the Maori language, that the hill Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu can be broken down into many words – I am not fluent in the language, although I know a little, but for instance Taumata is a landing point, tangi means cry, piki maunga means climb mountain – the hill undoubtedly has a legend associated with it that has resulted in such a long name, with much of the legend condensed into the single word…
Fantastic list! And very wonderful comments. I just reserved the Dictionary of Troublesome Words from my local library, as a result of the list, and am kicking myself, because I saw another book I’d like to read in the comments but haven’t been able to find it again…
>>Many cultures find that English might possibly be one of the most difficult languages to learn.
“Many cultures find that English might possibly be one of the most difficult languages to learn.”
That’s a joke, right? English is the easiest language to learn!
(stupid site ate half of my comment)
177. Jo: “Many cultures find that English might possibly be one of the most difficult languages to learn.”
****
It’s quite easy, actually. I’ve been speaking it since infancy.
Wow! You all sound so nice! I want to meet you all.
Here are 3 more oddities to tease you:
‘Black’ and ‘white’ originally meant the same thing
‘cleave’ can mean the opposite of itself
At three o’clock, 12 students are sitting in a room writing an essay. Their teacher goes out for 5 minutes and when he comes back, nobody’s left. How many students are there in the room at five past three?
Eh, all are about spelling or letters, nothing of particular linguistic interest, which English is full of fun oddities, like our use of “do”, no other language has such a prolific dummy, yet mandatory, pronoun as our “do”