Language facts and facts about languages, from the Random Facts shelf.
29 facts on this shelf
Prairie dogs, those little pups popping in and out of holes on vacant lots and rural rangeland, are talking up a storm. They have different "words" for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk and many other creatures.
There are arctic legends that speak of a time when man could understand and speak with whales. In fact, many legends worldwide speak of a time when people and animals understood each other.
A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.
"I am." and "I do." are the shortest complete sentences in the English language.
English is the dominant international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, and diplomacy and also on the Internet.
The Bible has been translated into Klingon.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
When possums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.
There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.
The Canary Islands were not named for a bird called a canary. They were named after a breed of large dogs. The Latin name was Canariae insulae - "Island of Dogs."
Alma mater means bountiful mother, a title Romans gave to goddesses. In latin it means nourishing mother.
China has more English speakers than the United States.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.
Alma mater means nourishing mother in Latin, To the romans it meant "bountiful mother."
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase, "Goodnight, sleep tight."
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all
their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."
China has more English speakers than the United States.
The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." uses every letter in the alphabet. It was developed by Western Union to Test telex/twx communications
Obstreperous means resisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly.... use it against someone, smile, and they'll think it was a compliment.
The longest one syllable words in the English Language are screeched and strengths
The ball of chewed food in your mouth (before you swallow) is called a bolus. Introduce this fact to the dinner table in polite company.
Initial public offering (IPO) — The first time a company sells stock to the public. An IPO is a type of a primary offering, which occurs whenever a company sells new stock, and differs from a secondary offering, which is the public sale of previously issued securities, usually held by insiders. Some people say IPO stands for "Immediate Profit Opportunities." More cynicIt's Probably Overpriced."
Lizards of the suborder Iguania communicate non-verbally with various combinations of push ups, body posturing, head movements, and displays of colorful belly patches & throat "dewlaps."
The term Buffalo Soldiers was a term used by the Cheyenne Indians to describe black American soldiers, whose dark skin and thick hair that resembled the buffalo.