Noel Botham - The Amazing Book of Useless Information: More Things You Didnt Need to Know But Are About to Find Out

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Table of Contents

Members of The Useless Information Society

Chairman
NOEL BOTHAM
General Secretary
KEITH WATERHOUSE
Beadle
KENNY CLAYTON
Chaplain
FATHER MICHAEL SEED
MICHAEL DILLON
BRIAN HITCHEN
ALASDAIR LONG
TIM WOODWARD
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN
STEVE WALSH
STRUAN RODGER
GAVIN HANS-HAMILTON
ASHLEY LUFF

SUGGS
MIKE MALLOY
MICHAEL BOOTH
JOHN PAYNE
BARRY PALIN
JOSEPH CONNOLLY
TONY COBB
JOHN MCENTEE
JOHN BLAKE
JOHN ROBERTS
BILL HAGGARTY
CHARLES LOWE
JOHN KING
KEN STOTT
RICHARD CORRIGAN
CONNER WALSH
JOHN TAYLOR

LINGUISTICALLY CHALLENGED

ORIGIN STORIES

The study of word origins is called etymology.

The word honcho comes from a Japanese word meaning squad leader and first came into usage in the English language during the American occupation of Japan following World War II.

Second string, meaning replacement or backup, comes from the Middle Ages. An archer always carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke.

No term existed for homosexuality in ancient Greecethere were only a variety of expressions referring to specific homosexual roles. Experts find this baffling, as the old Greek culture regarded male/male love in the highest regard. According to several linguists, the word homosexual was not coined until 1869 by the Hungarian physician Karoly Maria Benkert.

The word coach is derived from the word kocsi, a wagon from the village of Kocs, Hungary.

Long in the tooth, meaning old, was originally used to describe horses. As horses age, their gums recede, giving the impression that their teeth are growing. The longer the teeth look, the older the horse.

Aromatherapy is a term coined by French chemist Ren Maurice Gattefoss in the 1920s to describe the practice of using essential oils taken from plants, flowers, roots, and seeds in healing.

The phrase on cloud nine originally referred to the Cumulonimbus cloud, which is the tallest of all the types of cloud genera and was originally number nine on the list developed at the 1896 International Meteorological Conference. However, the order of cloud genera was later changed and Cumulonimbus is now listed at number ten.

ALPHABETICAL ORDER

The worlds largest alphabet is Cambodian, with 74 letters.

There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. The most widely spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese, with 885 million speakers in China alone.

There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: indivisibility.

Strengths is the longest word in the English language with just one vowel.

Anagrams amused the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews, and were popular during the Middle Ages.

LOOKING FOR MEANINGS

The O when used as a prefix in Irish surnames means descendant of.

The word set has the highest number of separate definitions in the English language, with 192 definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The ZIP in ZIP code stands for Zoning Improvement Plan.

A magic potion or charm thought to arouse sexual love, especially toward a specific person, is known as a philter.

The first episode of Joanie Loves Chachi was the highest-rated U.S. television episode in the history of Korean television. Chachi is Korean for penis.

In Finnish, pjj, meaning the main stayer, has 14 dots in a row.

VOCATION VOCABULARY

A speleologist studies caves.

A bibliophile is a collector of rare books. A bibliopole is a seller of rare books.

Cannibalism, eating human flesh, is also called anthropophagy.

A person that irons wrinkles from shoes as they are being made to ensure that they stay smooth is called a wrinkle chaser.

A vermiculturist is also known as a worm farmer.

A chicken sexer is a person who distinguishes the sex of chicken hatchlings.

BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT

The shortest complete sentence in the English language is Go.

WHAT IS UP?

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meaning than any other two-letter word... and that is UP. If you are not confused after reading this, you must really be messed UP.

Its easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we waken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election, and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends, we use paint to brighten UP a room, we polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers, and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house, and some guys fix UP the old car.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesnt rain for a while, things dry UP.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP.

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look UP the word in the dictionary. In a desk-size dictionary, UP takes UP almost a quarter of the page and definitions add UP to about thirty.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but, if you dont give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

HOT HOMONYMS

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The farm was used to produce produce.

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

They were too close to the door to close it.

The buck does strange things when the does are present.

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

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