The # symbol picked up the odd name octothorpe in twentieth-century telephone culture.
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Queue has four silent letters after q
Language
In English, queue is pronounced like the letter Q even though it has five letters.
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Lipograms deliberately avoid a letter
Language
A lipogram is writing that omits a chosen letter, sometimes for an entire novel.
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Semordnilaps become different words backward
Language
A semordnilap is a word that forms a different word in reverse, like stressed and desserts.
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💡 Weird Facts
Sigur Rós sings in a made-up language sometimes
Music
Frontman Jónsi uses a wordless invented vocal style called Hopelandic on several tracks instead of Icelandic.
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The interrobang combines two moods
Language
The interrobang is a punctuation mark that merges a question mark and an exclamation point.
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Muscle comes from little mouse
Language
The Latin root of muscle refers to a little mouse, probably from the look of a flexing muscle.
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Click consonants are ordinary speech sounds in some languages
Language
Several southern African languages use click consonants as regular parts of words.
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Nice once meant foolish
Language
The English word nice shifted meanings many times before becoming a compliment.
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The word alphabet comes from alpha and beta
Language
Alphabet combines the names of the first two Greek letters.
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"The quick brown fox" sentence uses every letter
Language
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a pangram — it contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet and has been a typing-test staple since the late 1800s.
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English has no rhyme for the word orange
Language
No single-word perfect rhyme exists in standard English — though poets have used "door hinge" and the Welsh hill "Blorenge" as near-rhymes.
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The word "sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia" means brain freeze
Language
It refers to the referred pain from rapid cooling of the sphenopalatine ganglion behind the nose — the official medical term for that ice-cream headache.
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Nicaraguan Sign Language emerged among children
Language
A new sign language developed as deaf children in Nicaragua began communicating together at school.
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Emoji does not come from emotion
Language
Emoji comes from Japanese words meaning picture character, not from the English word emotion.
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Sign languages have their own grammar
Language
Natural sign languages are full languages with grammar, slang, poetry, and regional variation.
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Awful once meant full of awe
Language
Awful originally meant awe-inspiring before its meaning drifted toward very bad.
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Goodbye grew from God be with ye
Language
The farewell goodbye evolved from an older blessing phrase.
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Hangul was deliberately designed
Language
The Korean alphabet Hangul was created in the fifteenth century with systematic letter shapes.
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Cherokee has a syllabary invented by one person
Language
Sequoyah created a writing system for Cherokee that represents syllables rather than single consonants and vowels.
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Whistled languages can carry across valleys
Language
Languages such as Silbo Gomero encode speech in whistles that travel long distances.
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Serendipity was coined from a fairy tale
Language
The word serendipity was inspired by The Three Princes of Serendip and their accidental discoveries.
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Palindromes read the same backward
Language
Words such as level and civic are palindromes because their letters mirror front to back.
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The ampersand was once recited with the alphabet
Language
Children sometimes ended the alphabet with and per se and, which blurred into ampersand.
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