English Is Strange

- Did you know that "verb" is a noun?

- How can you look up words in a dictionary if you can't spell them?

- If a word is misspelled in a dictionary, how would we ever know?

- If two mouses are mice and two louses are lice, why aren't two houses hice?

- If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?

- If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

- If you've read a book, you can reread it. But wouldn't this also mean that you would have to "member" somebody in order to remember them?

- In Chinese, why are the words for crisis and opportunity the same?

- Is it a coincidence that the only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable?

- Is there another word for a synonym?

- Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?

- What is another word for "thesaurus"?

- Where do swear words come from?

- Why can't you make another word using all the letters in "anagram"?

- Why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?

- Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

- Why do people use the word "irregardless"?

- Why do some people type "cool" as "kewl?"

- Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?

- Why do we say something's out of order when its broken but we never say in of order when it works?

- Why does "cleave" mean both split apart and stick together?

- Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?

- Why does flammable and inflammable mean the same thing?

- Why does the Chinese ideogram for trouble symbolize two women living under one roof?

- Why does X stand for a kiss and O stand for a hug?

- Why doesn't "onomatopoeia" sound like what it is?

- Why don't we say "why" instead of "how come"?

- Why is "crazy man" an insult, while to insert a comma and say "Crazy, man!" is a compliment?

- Why are a wise man and wise guy opposites?

- Why is abbreviation such a long word?

- Why is dyslexic so hard to spell?

- Why is it so hard to remember how to spell MNEMONIC?

- Why is it that no word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple?

- Why is it that the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?

- Why is it that we recite at a play and play at a recital?

- Why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

- Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

- Why is the plural of goose-geese, and not the plural of moose-meese?

- Why isn't "palindrome" spelled the same way backwards?

- Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?