The word 'trivia' originally referred to the three subjects taught first in medieval universities — grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

The word 'quarantine' comes from Italian — quarantina means 40 days, the waiting period for plague-exposed ships.

The word 'muscle' comes from Latin 'musculus' meaning little mouse — the movement of muscles under skin resembled a mouse moving.

The dot over the lowercase letters 'i' and 'j' is called a tittle.

The fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia — many hotels skip the 13th floor.

Mandarin Chinese is the language with the most native speakers at about 920 million.

The grammar of most languages encodes social hierarchy — languages like Korean have distinct speech levels for different relationships.

There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world — about half are expected to disappear by end of the century.

The word 'OK' may be the most recognized word in the world — understood in virtually every language.