Home The Mine of Useless Information - everything you never needed to know!

Words and Numbers Trivia

Subcategories: | Word Roots

Showing page 4 of 28

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next »


The word skeleton comes from the Ancient Greek word for dry.

The side strip of a finger in a glove is called a "fourchette."

"Hagiology" is the branch of literature dealing with the lives and legends of saints.

The words "naked" and "nude" are not the same. Naked implies unprotected. Nude means unclothed.

The six official languages of the United Nations are English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.

The hairless area of roughened skin at the tip of a bear's snout is called the rhinarium.

The words CHOICE COD read the same when held in front of a mirror upside-down. This also applies to the word DIOXIDE.

The slang term for a dollar, “buck," likely came about in the early U.S. frontier days when the skin of a male deer (a buck) was a common currency.

The Hawaiian alphabet contains just 12 letters;the Cambodian alphabet has 72 letters.

Something freckled can be said to be “lentiginous.”

The world's longest-named lake has 45 letters.

The slang word “yahoo” first appeared in Swift's 1726 book Gulliver's Travels as the name of a race of sub-human brutes.

The Incas and certain other pre-Columbian tribes in Peru developed the decimal system hundreds of years before it was used in Europe.

Something or someone that uses two languages, or is bilingual, can be said to be "diglot."

Theodore Roosevelt was the only U.S. president to deliver an inaugural address without using the word "I." Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower tied for second place, using "I" only once in their inaugural addresses.

The small magnifying glass used by jewelers and diamond dealers is called a loupe.

The Japanese gave us the term "honcho," meaning big shot. Hancho means "squad commander" in Japanese.

Something that has a sharp-pointed tail, such as certain birds, can be described as "oxyurous."

There are 293 different ways to make change for a dollar.

The Spanish names for hummingbirds are very descriptive of their behavior: Chupaflor - which means flower-sucker and Picaflor - which means flower nibbler

© 2006 The Mine of Useless Information