Useless Trivia Thursday

- Seventy percent of all English words are made with 10 letters: A, D, E, H, I, N, O, R, S, T.

- Between 1500-1650, about 10,000-12,000 English words were coined, of which about half still exist.

- English is the only language that has books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus.

-English speakers can recognize a word in 200 milliseconds or less from its onset, i.e. approximately one-fifth of a second from its beginning (usually well before the whole word has been heard).

- If you speak English, you know parts of at least a hundred different languages.

- In English, only J, O, V, and Y cannot be silent.

- It has been said that just 43 words account for fully half of all the words in common use and that just nine account for fully one-quarter of all the words in almost any sample of written English: and, be, have, it, of, the, to, will, you.

- Our extraordinarily complex language is built on forty-four distinctive sounds that combine into hundreds and thousands of meaningful word elements.

Via the Word Traveler. Too much of Thursday is spent waiting, most especially this one. Maybe that's why A. Dent could never get the hang of them. In any case, today's so-styled "word-of-the-day" is wholly misplaced. Fanfaronade is surely a word best reserved for Friday. Let the news be what it may and bring it forward.