More fun with English

I had some fun with this a few days ago, and my friend Ernie, from England, send me some oddities of the English Language--thanks to Ernie for these gems.

The longest words containing only one of the six vowels including Y are the words Defenselessness, Respectlessness, close behind are Tennessee.  And subbookkeeper (Some dictionaries consider subbookkeeper to be a word, in which case it's the only word with 4 consecutive doubled letters).

Forty is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. One in the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order

Bookkeeper is the only word that has three consecutive doubled letters.

Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English doe not have three common words ending in “gry.” Angry and Hungry are the only ones.

“Ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all.

“A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

Due do and dew seems to screw people over just as bad as they're there and their...

Ten two-letter words in a proper sentence: If it is to be, it is up to me!

There are a number of English words that are pronounced differently when you capitalize them and the term for this is Capitonyms. In English, this means words that when capitalized are pronounced differently than if they are written in small case

Polish: from Poland; written in small case the word becomes polish which means to create a shiny surface by rubbing; a compound used in that process

Reading: a personal or place name; written in small case it is reading which means to read some words

The following poem from Richard Lederer's The Word Circus is an example of the use of capitonyms:

Job's Job

In August, an august patriarch

Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.

Long-suffering Job secured a job

To polish piles of Polish brass.