The English language is filled with interesting or unusual words. Whether they're fun to say, or the spelling and pronunciation rules just don't match up. Then again, the English language conflicts with the rules of the English language, so who am I to bring this up?
Speaking of which, I have a theory about that. One day a bunch of linguists got together for a meeting, and said, "Hey, let's make this as confusing and nonsensical as humanly possible! We'll come up with conflicting rules, words that don't mean what they look like they mean, and an abundance of silent letters!"
Below is a compilation of some of these words.
Speaking of which, I have a theory about that. One day a bunch of linguists got together for a meeting, and said, "Hey, let's make this as confusing and nonsensical as humanly possible! We'll come up with conflicting rules, words that don't mean what they look like they mean, and an abundance of silent letters!"
Below is a compilation of some of these words.
- Clobber
- Gobsmacked
- Pwn (A slang term derived from an intentional misspelling of 'own', based on the neighboring positions of 'o' and 'p' on a keyboard. And don't ask how to pronounce it, because there's multiple forms.)
- Flabbergasted
- Googol
- Chuffed (It has two definitions, which are exact opposites of each other. See this image for further details.)
- Egregious (See 'chuffed' above.)
- Colonel (Seriously, the spelling and the pronunciation don't even come close to matching.)
- Gobbledygook
- Penguin (The English language says U is just a vowel, then turns around and does this. Same thing with words like 'language', 'linguistics', 'suave'.)
- Queue (Um... which letters are silent? What sounds are from what letters? Or, as some have pointed out, maybe all the vowels are silent, and it's just pronounced 'Q'.)
- Bamboozled
- Kerfuffle
- One (There's no consonant at the beginning, but it's pronounced as 'wun'. Apparently we not only have silent letters, we have invisible letters and implied sounds.)
- Sword (It's pronounced 'sord'. Why is the 'W' silent?)
- Discombobulated
- Lollygag (Either you're wasting time doing nothing, or you're choking to death on a lollipop. Hard to tell with bizarre words such as these...)
- Coombe (And coomb, and combe, and comb... Uh, do we really need four of these? There's spelling variations, and then there's anarchy.)
- Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (This super-long word describes a phobia of long words. Somebody had a twisted sense of humor.)
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