WORDS WORDS WORDS Facts

WORDS WORDS WORDS Facts

By May Rostom

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened therefore making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight."

  A baby kangaroo is called a joey
 Attics were invented in Attica.
 “Rhythm” is the longest English word without a vowel.
 In England, in the 1880's, "Pants" was considered a dirty word

  Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions.
 It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the "honeymoon".

  A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle; a group of geese in the air is a skein.
 Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive and Clinophobia is the fear of beds.
 The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable

  No word in the English language rhymes with “month, orange, silver and purple”.
 Oscar Wilde and his friends came up the with the word "dude." It came from the words "duds" and "attitude."

  The little circles of paper that are cut out after a paper has been punched by a hole-puncher are called "chad."
 Limelight was how the stage was before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
 A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second

The wise Shakespeare once said “When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain”