Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    There Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words
    There Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words
    There Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words
    Ebook202 pages1 hour

    There Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words

    By Mitchell Symons

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Did you know that 'Almost' is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order? Or that 'Stewardesses' is the longest word you can type solely with your left hand? Or that fireflies aren't flies, they're beetles?

    From information about words and their uses, useful lists of things you never knew had names, palindromes, famous lines from literature and film, to bizarre test answers and much, much more, There Are Tittles in This Title is bursting with truly oddball facts about words and language - and will have you hooked from the very first page.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael O'Mara
    Release dateOct 2, 2014
    ISBN9781782432715
    There Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words
    Author

    Mitchell Symons

    Mitchell Symons is the author of Why Girls Can't Throw, as well as This Book, That Book, and The Other Book. The creator of dozens of crossword, trivia, and humor books, Symons is a columnist for London's Sunday Express.

    Read more from Mitchell Symons

    Related to There Are Tittles in This Title

    Related ebooks

    Linguistics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Frank Bits

      Apr 4, 2021

      As any paleskin can attest, the sun is an enemy. A big, hot, fiery enemy that sometimes wears sunglasses in pictures drawn by kids. Wearing a hat is the best way to flip the bird at the solar bully (aside from actually, you know, flipping the bird),

      13 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle Time

      Jan 18, 2023

      You have 15 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. Each word must contain four or more letters, one of which must be the central square. No proper nouns, plurals or foreign words are allowed. There is one nine-letter

      4 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle Time

      Oct 26, 2022

      You have 15 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. Each word must contain four or more letters, one of which must be the central square. No proper nouns, plurals or foreign words are allowed. There is one nine-letter

      4 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle BREAK 4

      Sep 13, 2022

      Which celebrity sometimes uses the name Johnny Madrid when booking into hotels? Fit the words into the grid, then read down the letters in the shaded circles. 3 LETTERS OWN 4 LETTERS CHERLIMENODSREAM SAKE TOAD 5 LETTERS BANJOKUDOSOOZEDS

      2 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle Time

      Dec 7, 2022

      You have 15 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. Each word must contain four or more letters, one of which must be the central square. No proper nouns, plurals or foreign words are allowed. There is one nine-letter

      6 min read

    • Article

      Taking It On The Chin

      Mar 3, 2021

      Taking It On The Chin
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Science Of Accents

      Apr 4, 2021

      The Science Of Accents
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Word That Dare Not Speak Its Name

      Jun 30, 2021

      Is it possible to kill a word? Many words certainly go unuttered. If you’re a typical English-speaker, you have a vocabulary of roughly 20,000 words, or perhaps 40,000 if you’ve been to university. Yet the OED puts the number of words at over 500,000

      3 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle TIME

      Dec 6, 2023

      Puzzle TIME
      4 min read

    • Article

      Issue 12 22 Page Pullout

      Mar 15, 2023

      Issue 12 22 Page Pullout
      21 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle BREAK 4

      Jan 3, 2024

      In which country did a study of frogs find that city-dwellers have fancier mating calls than their rural relatives? Fit the words into the grid, then read down the letters in the shaded circles. 3 LETTERS AILELFOAKPENROWSKY 4 LETTERS ACNEDART

      2 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle Time

      Aug 31, 2022

      You have 15 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. Each word must contain four or more letters, one of which must be the central square. No proper nouns, plurals or foreign words are allowed. There is one nine-letter

      4 min read

    • Article

      Sensualiterature

      Mar 29, 2021

      BRIAN DOYLE (1957–2017) was the longtime editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland and the author of many books of essays and fiction, most notably the novels Mink River and Martin Marten. ONE OF THE THINGS that we do not talk about w

      3 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle Time

      Nov 9, 2022

      You have 15 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. Each word must contain four or more letters, one of which must be the central square. No proper nouns, plurals or foreign words are allowed. There is one nine-letter

      6 min read

    • Article

      Reeling In The Years

      Oct 15, 2020

      WHEN I wake up I’ve begun to heave out of bed and groan in a way a horse does as it rolls. Sort of loud and unattractively guttural. When I sit on the sofa, I expel air like a burst beachball. Pfffffffft. My knees are rogered and if I go for a run I

      4 min read

    • Article

      On The

      Aug 1, 2021

      On The
      4 min read

    • Article

      This Week It’s: Carnations

      Feb 28, 2023

      ONCE known as gilliflowers, carnations have been grown throughout Asia and Europe for thousands of years, probably before written records were kept. Forms of dianthus, of which the carnation is a small group, have been extensively bred over the centu

      5 min read

    • Article

      This Week It’s: Carnations

      Feb 28, 2023

      ONCE known as gilliflowers, carnations have been grown throughout Asia and Europe for thousands of years, probably before written records were kept. Forms of dianthus, of which the carnation is a small group, have been extensively bred over the centu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Mind Of My Own

      Dec 28, 2023

      It’s not easy keeping up with the latest lingo… Funny little things, aren’t they? Words can say so much yet mean so little and without them, life would be impossible. The most important three little words used to be ‘I love you’. Now they’re proba

      4 min read

    • Article

      Your Letters

      Aug 12, 2022

      Your Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      Puzzle Time

      Feb 1, 2023

      You have 15 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. Each word must contain four or more letters, one of which must be the central square. No proper nouns, plurals or foreign words are allowed. There is one nine-letter

      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 9, 2023

      Letters
      7 min read

    • Article

      PUZZLE Central

      Feb 15, 2023

      PUZZLE Central
      21 min read

    • Article

      Good to SHARE

      Sep 16, 2020

      Good to SHARE
      4 min read

    • Article

      Legends

      Mar 22, 2022

      Legends
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for There Are Tittles in This Title

    4.5/5

    5 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Fun little book about all things wordy and alphabetical that's a mixture of the pedestrian (palindromes and acronyms), the bizarre (United Arab Emirates is the longest country name with alternating vowels and consonants), and the hilarious (the phrase Hobson's choice resulted from a stingy horse dealer who forced buyers to take only the horse next to the wall and gave them no say in the matter - hence Hobson's choice). Its a great book to read cover to cover (will only take an hour, tops) or dip into for your own amusement and/or education (did you know Hull City is the only British football club whose letters cannot be filled in with pencil?) If you like words, if you like unusual and weird facts, or if you just like learning utterly useless things, you will love this little book.
    • 5/5
      A wonderfully fun read, I loved every page of this and laughed out loud throughout!

    Book preview

    There Are Tittles in This Title - Mitchell Symons

    Things

    Introduction

    I had so much fun compiling Numberland, a book devoted to number-related trivia, that I decided to do the same for words. I wanted to call it Wordworld, (a bit of) a pun on Numberland, but my publisher, Louise Dixon, suggested There Are Tittles in This Title. Once she explained to me what a tittle was (a dot above the ‘i’), I was all for it. The truth is, even after some sixty-odd books (the books weren’t odd – well, not ALL of them – but the figure is approximate and therefore ‘odd’), I’m useless at titles – except for other people’s books where I’m surprisingly inventive. Just can’t do it for myself.

    So much for the title. The book itself was pure joy to compile. Among the many things I learned, my absolute favourite was an obsolete English word – scurryfunge – which means a hasty tidying of the house between the time you see a neighbour and the time she knocks on the door. What’s not to like? I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did writing it.

    Now for some acknowledgements:

    I’d like to thank my wonderful publisher Louise Dixon, with whom I’ve worked for some twenty years without ever having a cross word (which must be some kind of record). My editor, Gabriella Nemeth, has done a fine job of turning the sow’s ear I sent her into the silk purse you have before you. My thanks also to Emily Banyard for her amazing PR work. A big word of praise too for the illustrator, Andrew Pinder, and the designers, Claire Cater and Kay Hayden.

    In addition, I’d also like to thank the following people for their help, contributions and/or support: Gilly Adams, Jenny Garrison, Nicholas Ridge, Charlie Symons, Jack Symons, Louise Symons, Penny Symons, David Thomas, Martin Townsend, Clair Woodward and Rob Woolley.

    Mitchell Symons

    2014

    The Names of Things You Didn’t Know Had Names

    Adelaster: meaning ‘unknown star’ in Greek, this is the name given to newly discovered plants awaiting classification by botanists

    Aglet: the plastic covering on the end of a shoelace

    Aphthongs: silent letters in words such as ‘know’ and ‘psychology’

    Armsate: the hole in a shirt or a jumper through which you put your hand and arm

    Bonnet: the cap on a fire hydrant

    Brannock device: the metal instrument used in shoe shops to measure feet

    Brassard: a band worn around the arm

    Buccula: a person’s double chin

    Chanking: food that’s spat out

    Columella: the bottom part of the nose that separates the nostrils

    Contrail: the thin line of cloud that forms behind an aircraft at high altitudes

    Diastema: a gap between the front teeth

    Drupelets: the bumps on raspberries

    Epithalamium: a poem written to celebrate a wedding

    Eyes: the holes in Swiss cheese

    Ferrule: the metal band on the top of a pencil that holds the eraser in place

    F-hole: the S-shaped opening in a violin

    Fillip: the technical term for snapping your fingers

    Gambrinous: the state of being full of beer

    Griffonage: illegible handwriting

    Gruntle: a pig’s snout

    Harp: the metal hoop a lampshade sits on

    IDEO locator: the ‘you are here’ arrow on a map

    Jiffy: 1/100th of a second

    Keeper: the loop on a belt that holds the end in place after it has passed through the buckle

    Lalochezia: the use of swearing to relieve stress or pain

    Lemniscate: the infinity symbol

    Lunt: a puff of smoke, such as that produced when someone smokes a pipe

    Lunula: the white tip of the finger and toenail (because the end of the nail is rounded like the moon)

    Minimus: the little finger or toe

    Mucophagy: the consumption of the nasal mucus obtained from nose-picking

    Nemophilia: the love of spending time in forests

    Nittles: the punctuation marks designed to denote swear words in comics

    Obdormition: when an arm or a leg goes to ‘sleep’ as a result of numbness caused by pressure on a nerve

    Octothorpe: the ‘pound’ key (#)

    Ophyron: the space between your eyebrows

    Pandiculation: the act of stretching and yawning

    Peen: on a hammer, the end opposite the striking face

    Pips: the little bumps on the surface of a table tennis bat

    Porcelator: the little hole in the sink that lets water drain out instead of flowing over the side

    Purlicue: the space between the extended thumb and index finger

    Rasceta: the creases on the inside of your wrist

    Rowel: the revolving star on the back of a cowboy’s spurs

    Saddle: the rounded part on the top of a book of matches

    Sillage: the faint trace of perfume left in the wake of a passing person

    Snarge: the remains of birds hit by aeroplanes in flight

    Tines: the prongs on forks

    Tittle: the dot above the letter ‘i’

    Toque: a chef’s tall hat

    Tragus: the little lump of flesh just in front of the ear canal

    Truck: the ball on top of a flagpole

    Ullage: the word for empty space between the bottle top and the liquid

    Vamp: the upper front part of a shoe

    Vibrissae: a cat’s whiskers

    Walla: a sound engineer’s term for room noise

    Zarf: a holder for a cup or a mug without handles

    There is no single word for the back of the knee

    A Word to the Wise 1

    Did you know . . .

    Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

    The only fifteen-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

    Hull City is the only British league football team that hasn’t got any letters you can fill in with a pencil.

    If you mouth the word colourful to someone, it looks like you are saying, I love you.

    Knightsbridge is the place with the most consonants in a row.

    Just 1,000 words make up ninety per cent of all writing.

    No word in the English language rhymes with orange, silver or month.

    Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters mt

    Queue is the only word in the English language to be pronounced the same way even if the last four letters are removed.

    Zenith, tariff, sherbet, algebra, carafe, syrup, cotton, mattress and alcohol are all derived from Arabic.

    Almost is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

    Appeases, arraigning, hotshots, signings and teammate all have letters which occur twice and only twice.

    The syllable -ough can be pronounced nine different ways – as evidenced by the following sentence: ‘A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walk through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing.’

    The sentence He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas contains seven different spellings of the ‘ee’ sound.

    Fun with Words

    Words that are rarely used in the singular:

    Words that are rarely used in the positive:

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1