The dab of toothpaste you squeeze onto your toothbrush is called a "nurdle".
6
The word "gorilla" comes from a Greek word that means "a tribe of hairy women".
12
A “butt” was a Medieval unit of measure for wine. Technically, a 'buttload' of wine is about 475 liters, or 126 gallons.
10
More people in Africa speak French than in France itself.
12
Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words that we use today.
17
The word "impossible" dropped in use by 50% over the course of the 20th century
5
Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying "jag of Flapan", instead of "flag of Japan".
2
The equivalents of the English saying "That's Greek to me" are "This appears to be Spanish" (German), "This is Chinese to me" (Dutch), "It's German to me" (Philippines), "It's Hebrew" (Finnish), "It's Chinese to me" (Hebrew), "Sounds like Mars language/These are chicken intestines" (China).
10
Iceland has been so culturally isolated through history since the Vikings, that compared to other Scandinavian counties, people who speak Icelandic can still read the old Norsk sagas.
4
The word 'mile' is derived from the Latin word for 1,000 - the number of paces it took the average Roman!
6
The word 'mortgage' comes from a French law term that means 'death pledge'.
14
Before the English speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the color orange was referred to as “geoluhread” which is Old English for red-yellow.
7
Thinking in a foreign language makes decisions more rational.
6
In Denmark, "Fart-kontrol" means "Speed check".
9
'⸮' is a punctuation mark that was first proposed in the 1580s to denote sarcasm or irony.
17