Random English Trivia

(Word list courtesy of OjoHaven)

If you are a fan of Scrabble or British TV programs like Wordplay, you must have at least asked yourself questions like What is the longest word I can make…?

Well then, you are in for a treat! This is probably one of the most intriguing list of English words with some quirky properties that I have found scouring the web over the last couple of decades.

Here we go:

1. The longest common (i.e. likely to appear in an unabridged dictionary) word
   “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”

2. The two longest one-syllable words in English
   “screeched”, “strengths”

3. Words which contain all five (or six, if you append “ly”) vowels in alphabetical order
   “facetious”, “abstemious”, “annelidous”, “arsenious”

4. Words which contain all five vowels in reverse alphabetical order
   “duoliteral”, “subcontinental”, “uncomplimentary”

5. Words which contain the longest strings of consonants
   “bergschrund”, “borschts”, “eschscholtzia”, “latchstring”, “weltschmerz”

6. Longest word with no repeated letters
   “uncopyrightable”

7. Sentence containing seven spellings of the [i] (“ee”) sound
   “He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas.”

8. 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.”

9. Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with left hand
   “desegregated”, “desegregates”, “reverberated”, “reverberates”, “stewardesses”, “watercresses”

10. Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with right hand
    “homophony”, “homophyly”, “nonillion”, “pollinium”, “polyonomy”, “polyphony”

11. Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with alternating hand
    “dismantlement”

12. Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard on the top row (“qwertyuiop”)
    “rupturewort”, “proterotype”

13. Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard on the middle row (“asdfghjkl”)
    “alfalfas”, “hadassah”

Have you ever encountered an English word or sentence with unique properties? Leave a comment below.