Wednesday, May 17, 2006

How many eyes?!

I was reading some revision notes the other day when I came across the word indivisibility. I noticed the large number of eyes it contained (writing it like that cos I don't know if it should be i's or just is, and I don't want to get it wrong since I'm a language student as that would just make me look bad) I did a bit of research on it and found out it is actually the shortest english word with 6 eyes, wow! I also found this amazing website (well it's amazing if you're a language geek) :

http://plex.us/archives/word.html

It has some amazing facts, such as

AMBIDEXTROUSLY
is the longest word in common use with no letter appearing more than once.
ONE THOUSAND contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.

It is claimed that -OUGH can be pronounced 9 different ways in the following sentence:

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.
However, David Olsen says that slough does not provide a unique pronunciation for -ough, but that HOUGH (pronounced hock) is a Scottish word, meaning the ankle joint of a horse, cow, or foul, or to hamstring, or it is an obsolete British word meaning to clear the throat. Olsen says that in order for the sentence to have 9 different ways of pronouncing -ough, it could be rewritten as:
A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed, houghed, and hiccoughed.
Ted Clarke says there are 10 pronunciations for OUGH. He adds LOUGH, the Irish form of loch.

Check out the site for more fascinating facts!

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