The phrase 'rule of thumb' has multiple possible origins — none involving domestic violence, despite popular myth.

The clicks in Khoisan languages of southern Africa are consonants — making them among the most phonetically complex languages.

'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' contains every letter of the English alphabet.

English has the largest vocabulary of any language — the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 words.

There's a German word 'schadenfreude' meaning pleasure derived from others' misfortune, with no English equivalent.

The word 'salary' comes from the Latin 'salarium' — Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt.

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

The hashtag symbol '#' is officially called an octothorpe.

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