What is the oldest English word?

According to a 2009 study by researchers at Reading University, the oldest words in the English language include “I“, “we“, “who“, “two” and “three“, all of which date back tens of thousands of years.

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What was the 1st English word?

There was no first word. At various times in the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and other northern Europeans show up in what is now England. They're speaking various North Sea Germanic dialects that might or might not have been mutually understandable.

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What is the oldest word ever?

Mother, bark and spit are some of the oldest known words, say researchers. Continue reading → Mother, bark and spit are just three of 23 words that researchers believe date back 15,000 years, making them the oldest known words.

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What are the 23 oldest words?

Science Says These are the Oldest 23 Words in the English...
  1. Thou. The singular form of "you," this is the only word that all seven language families share in some form. ...
  2. I. Similarly, you'd need to talk about yourself. ...
  3. Mother. ...
  4. Give. ...
  5. Bark. ...
  6. Black. ...
  7. Fire. ...
  8. Ashes.

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What was Hello in Old English?

Bill Bryson asserts in his book Mother Tongue that "hello" comes from Old English hál béo þu ("Hale be thou", or "whole be thou", meaning a wish for good health; cf. "goodbye" which is a contraction of "God be with ye").

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What's the Earliest English Word?

29 related questions found

What word needs 3 hours to say?

The longest English word

The longest word in English has 189,819 letters and takes 3 hours to pronounce. This is a technical term for the chemical composition of titin. Titin is the largest known protein responsible for maintaining the passive elasticity of the muscles.

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What is the shortest word in history?

The shortest word is 'a. ' Some might wonder about the word 'I' since it consists of one letter, too. In sound, 'a' is shorter because it is a monophthong (consists of one vowel), while 'I' is a diphthong.

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What is 100th word?

100th (hundredth) 101st (hundred and first)

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What is the oldest word for love?

The word 'love' was once '*leubh', a word used by the Proto-Indo-Europeans approximately five thousand years ago to describe care and desire. When 'love' was incorporated into Old English as 'lufu', it had turned into both a noun to describe, 'deep affection' and its offspring verb, 'to be very fond of'.

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What is the oldest word for water?

Etymology. The word water comes from Old English wæter, from Proto-Germanic *watar (source also of Old Saxon watar, Old Frisian wetir, Dutch water, Old High German wazzar, German Wasser, vatn, Gothic ???? (wato), from Proto-Indo-European *wod-or, suffixed form of root *wed- ("water"; "wet").

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Where did okay come from?

A more likely explanation is that the term originated as an abbreviation of orl korrekt , a jokey misspelling of 'all correct' which was current in the US in the 1830s. The oldest written references result from its use as a slogan by the Democratic party during the American Presidential election of 1840.

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Who invented English language?

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.

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Who invented the word English?

Supposedly, the word “English” is a corruption of the word “Anglish” — or, the “Language of the Angles”, one of the Germanic tribes that, along with the Saxons and the Jutes (collectively the “Anglo-Saxons”), invaded and colonised Britain from the 5th century after the Romans left.

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What word has all 5 vowels?

EUNOIA is the shortest word in English which has all five vowels.

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What word has no vowels?

Shh, psst, and hmm do not have vowels, either vowel symbols or vowel sounds. There is some controversy whether they are in fact “words,” however.

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What word has 183 letters?

The longest word in the English language, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, won primary school speller Jemimah Elise Sampson, the East Coast Radio's Last Kid Standing title, as seen in the video below published by the East Coast Radio.

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What's the hardest word to pronounce?

The Most Difficult English Word To Pronounce
  • Rural.
  • Otorhinolaryngologist.
  • Colonel.
  • Penguin.
  • Sixth.
  • Isthmus.
  • Anemone.
  • Squirrel.

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What word that has 7 letters?

Some of the most popular words of this length include THROUGH, PICTURE, and COUNTRY. If you play word games through your workday, you may discover an upset employer.

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How did they say goodbye in Old English?

The first known use of the word “goodbye” was recorded in 1573 in a letter by English writer and scholar, Gabriel Harvey, which reads: “To requite your gallonde [gallon] of godbwyes, I regive you a pottle of howdyes.”" “Godbwye” is a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye.” Throughout the years the word “good” was ...

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How do you say Girl in Old English?

English
  1. girle, gyrle (obsolete)
  2. gal (colloquial)
  3. guhrl, gurl (nonstandard)
  4. grrrl, grrl (slang)

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What word can replace hello?

Synonyms of hello
  • salute.
  • greeting.
  • welcome.
  • salutation.
  • ave.
  • regards.
  • respects.
  • hail.

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