In the movie "Toy Story", the carpet designs in Sid's hallway is the same as the carpet designs in "The Shining.
At Disneyland they have hundreds of wild domesticated cats running around the park. They never come out during the day because there's too many people, but the reason they're there is to catch the mice.
Golf was banned in England in 1457 because it was considered a distraction from the serious pursuit of archery.
Dennis the Menace's favorite drink is Root beer.
Before 1859, baseball umpires were seated in padded chairs behind home plate.
The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue.
In 1976 Rodrigo's 'Guitar Concierto de Aranjuez' was No 1 in the UK for only three hours because of a computer error.
In 1976 Rodrigo's 'Guitar Concierto de Aranjuez' was No 1 in the UK for only three hours because of a computer error.
Grand Rapids, Michigan is the "SpaghettiOs Capital of the World" because per-capita consumption is highest in that city, per the Franco-American Company. Reportedly, there are more than 1,750 "O's" in a 15-ounce can of SpaghettiOs.
Clinophobia is the fear of beds.
Mageiricophobia is the intense fear of having to cook.
Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
Mae West never said "Come up and see me sometime." She said "Come on up sometime and see me." Cary Grant never said "Judy, Judy, Judy," and Cagney never said "You dirty rat..."
In 1970, "MCI" stood for "Microwave Communications, Inc." No longer used as an acronym, it now stands alone.
Despite the fact that 77 percent of Americans go to the grocery store with a list, it's estimated that half of everything bought there is bought on impulse. Supermarkets report very strong sales of almost anything they stock at the check-out line.
Alexander Hamilton and his son, Philip, both died on the same spot, and both during duels. Philip went first, 3 years before his father would be killed in that same field by Aaron Burr.
When Coca-Cola began to be sold in China, they used characters that would sound like "Coca-Cola" when spoken. Unfortunately, what they turned out to mean was "Bite the wax tadpole".
From Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me -- In the U.S., "shag" is far less offensive than in other English-speaking countries. Singapore briefly forced a title change to "The Spy Who Shioked Me." ("Shioked" means "treated nicely.")
A "sysygy" occurs when all the planets of the our Solar System line up.
An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.
Many Japanese golfers carry "hole-in-one" insurance, because it is traditional in Japan to share one's good luck by sending gifts to all your friends when you get an "ace." The price for what the Japanese term an "albatross" can often reach $10,000.
The English-language alphabet originally had only 24 letters. One missing letter was J, which was the last letter to be added to the alphabet. The other latecomer to the alphabet was U.
"Fan" is an abbreviation for the word "fanatic." Toward the turn of the 19th century, various media referred to football enthusiasts first as "football fanatics," and later as a "football fan."
The proper name of our sole natural satellite is "the Moon" and therefore...it should be capitalized. The 60-odd natural satellites of other planets, however are called "moons" (in lower case) because each has been given a proper name, such as Deimos, Amalthea, Hyperion, Miranda, Larissa, or Charon.
The word "snorkel" comes from the German word "schnoerkel", which was a tube used by German submarine crews in WW2. The subs used an electric battery when traveling underwater, which had to be recharged using diesel engines, which needed air to run. To avoid the hazard of surfacing to run the engines, the Germans used the schnoerkel to feed air from the surface into the engines.
The name "fez" is Turkish for "Hat".
The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful plough man strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
"The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
"Jerkwater" is a railroad term. Until about fifty years ago, most trains were pulled by thirsty steam engines that needed to refill their boilers from water towers next to the tracks. But some towns were so small and inconsequential that they lacked a water tower. When trains stopped in those places, the crew had to find a nearby stream or well and, bucket-brigade style, "jerk" the water to the train. Those little dots on the map became known as jerkwater towns.
Malcolm Lowry had pnigophobia—the fear of choking on fish bones.
Augustus Caesar had achluophobia—the fear of sitting in the dark.
Androphobia is a fear of men.
Caligynephobia is a fear of beautiful women.
Pentheraphobia is a fear of a mother-in-law.
Scopophobia is a fear of being looked at.
Phobophobia is a fear of fearing.
Mageiricophobia is the intense fear of having to cook.
Papaphobia is the fear of Popes.
Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.
Clinophobia is the fear of beds.
Incredible means not believable. Incredulous means not believing. When someone's story is truly incredible, you ought to be incredulous.
The terms "prime minister," "premier" and "chancellor" all refer to the leading minister of a government, and any differences from nation to nation stem from different systems of government, not from title definitions.
Tennis pro Evonne Goolagong's last name means "kangaroo's nose" in Australia's aboriginal language.
A "sysygy" occurs when all the planets of the our Solar System line up.
The most common letters in the English language are R S T L N E. Sound familiar? Watch an episode of "Wheel of Fortune"...
A "necropsy" is an autopsy on animals.
EEG stands for Electroencephalogram.
The English word pajamas has it's origin in Persian. It is a combination of the Persian words pa (leg) and jamah (garment).
The ZIP in zip code stands for "Zone Improvement Plan."
Yucatan, as in the peninsula, is from Maya "u" + "u" + "uthaan" meaning "listen how they speak," and is what the Maya said when they first heard the Spaniards.
Punctuation was not invented until the 1500's.
"Catch 22" has come to mean a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem. The original "Catch-22," in Joseph Heller's 1961 novel of the same name, is the catch that prevents a US Air Force pilot in World War II from asking to be grounded on the basis of insanity. The pilot knows that military regulations permit insane pilots to be grounded and not forced to fly further dangerous bombing missions. However, the regulation prevents airmen from escaping bombing missions by pleading insanity by stating that any airman rational enough to WANT to be grounded cannot possibly be insane and therefore is fit to fly. From the novel: a man "would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to: but if he didn't he was sane and had to."
The custom of saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes was first used by ancients when they believed that breath was the essence of life, and when you sneeze a part of you life is escaping. Evil spirits rush into your body and occupy the empty space. By saying "God bless you" the speaker is protecting the sneezer from that spirits.
Lycanthropy is a disease in which a man thinks he's a wolf. It is the scientific name for "wolf man" or, werewolf.
"Evian" spelled backwards is naive.
Author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, who sometimes wrote under the name "The Duchess," observed in her novel "Molly Bawn" that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The phrase has passed into the English language.
The "glair" is the white or clear part of an egg. The word glair comes from the Latin clarus, meaning "clear."
The longest word used by Shakespeare in any of his works is "honorificabilitudinitatibus," found in "Love's Labors Lost." Unfortunately he's no longer around to tell us what it means.
Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself."
The right side of a boat was called the starboard side due to the fact that the astronavigators used to stand out on the plank (which was on the right side) to get an unobstructed view of the stars. The left side was called the port side because that was the side that you put in on at the port. This was so that they didn't knock off the starboard.
Ever wonder where the phrase "two bits" came from? Some coins used in the American colonies before the Revolutionary War were Spanish dollars, which could be cut into pieces, or bits. Since two pieces equaled one-fourth dollar, the expression "two bits" came into being as a name for 25 cents.
Montgomery Ward was the first to advertise "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" in 1874 — two years after Aaron Montgomery Ward, launched his first mail-order catalog.
OK is the most successful of all Americanisms. It has invaded hundreds of other languages and been adopted by them as a word. Mencken claims that US troops deployed overseas during WWII found it already in use by Bedouins in the Sahara to the Japanese in the Pacific. It was also the fourth word spoken on the surface of the moon. It stands for oll korrect, a misspelling of all correct.
When Coca-Cola began to be sold in China, they used characters that would sound like "Coca-Cola" when spoken. Unfortunately, what they turned out to mean was "Bite the wax tadpole".
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
Pokemon stands for "pocket monster."
The name Ethiopia mean "land of sunburned faces" in Greek.
A coward was originally a boy who took care of cows.
MAFIA is an acronym for Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela, or "Death to the French is Italy's Cry"
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
When a film is in production, the last shot of the day is the "martini shot," the next to last one is the "Abby Singer".
"Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."
A bird watching term: peebeegeebee = a pied-billed grebe.
"Big cheese" and "big wheel" are Medieval terms of envious respect for those who could afford to buy whole wheels of cheese at a time, an expense few could enjoy. Both these terms are often used sarcastically today.
When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g., motor + hotel = motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called a "portmanteau."
The slash character is called a virgule, or solidus. A URL uses slash characters, not back slash characters.
"Corduroy" comes from the French, "cord du roi" or "cloth of the king."
In the Greek alphabet "X" is the first letter for the word Christ, "Xristos." Xmas means "Christ's mass."
If you come from Manchester, you are a Mancunian.
There are six words in the English language with the letter combination "uu." Muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate, duumvir and residuum.
The abbreviation "ORD" for Chicago's O'Hare airport comes from the old name "Orchard Field."