www.ZTCprep.com THE BOOK OF WORD RECORDS A Look at Some of the Strangest, Shortest, Longest, and Overall Most Remarkable Words in the English Language Asher Cantrell www.ZTCprep.com For my grandfathers, Benjamin J. Lisle and C. Thomas Cantrell. I wouldn’t have done this without your constant encouragement. www.ZTCprep.com Contents Introduction Twelve of the Most Popular Passwords (and Why They’re Awful) The Fifteen Longest Words in the Dictionary Words That Just Might Win You a Game of Scrabble Eleven of the Longest Books Ever Written The Eight Longest Album Titles Ever The Seven Longest Messages Sent Into Space The Fifteen Longest One-Syllable Words in the English Language The Thirty Grossest Words in the English Language The Thirty Prettiest Words in the English Language The Four Greatest Historical Contributors to the English Language How a Meme Became the Most Popular Word in the Whole World Six Gibberish-Sounding Sentences That Are Grammatically Correct Ten Everyday Words That Have No Rhyme The Most Common Words in the English Language Three of the Largest Publications Ever Created Three of the Smallest Publications Ever Created The Seven Longest Speeches Ever Given The Five Varieties of Shortest Stories Ever Written The Five Longest Words in English That Can Be Typed One-Handed Twenty of the Longest Words Without A, E, I, O, or U The Five Longest Names in the World Ten of the Craziest Auto-Antonyms in the English Language The Six Longest Song Titles Ever The Five Longest English Palindromes The Five Longest Sentences Ever Published The Five Longest Brand Names in the English Language The Eight Longest Made-Up Words in Fiction The Six Best-Selling Novels of All Time The Five Oldest Curse Words We Still Use The Ten Most Common English Names in Movies www.ZTCprep.com Introduction The greatest invention in human history is language. We didn’t “invent” fire. Fire was already there, and we just figured out ways to control it. Sure, we came up with the wheel and tools and all of that stuff, and they’ve served us well, but eventually we had to come up with a way to pass on the methods for making wheels and tools, and for less tangible things, like warnings of danger. That’s where language came in. And, more than any other invention in our history, language has been the thing that makes us human. Being able to convey ideas and concepts to one another via simple, powerful sounds is how our culture survived, how our knowledge survived, and how we survived. Our strength is in our societies, and our societies grew strong because of words. From language came writing, and from writing came the printing press, and from the printing press, we now have the Internet. Each iteration improves and reinforces our vast cultural knowledge, which, in turn, strengthens us as a society and, indeed, as a species. Homo sapiens have one thing no other animal before us has had: a network of information, millennia deep, that we keep encoded in our brains and express through voices and books. Every time you open your mouth, you are connected to your ancestors by a bond no other creature has. As extraordinary as language is, though, we take it for granted. We tell our friends and family and coworkers the things they might want or need to know, ask questions about things we don’t know, and create things that we’d like other people’strangers, even’to know. But how often do we truly celebrate language? How often do we say, “Gosh, I’m glad I’m able to express myself clearly and easily through an established vocabulary and the standard rules of grammar” That’s what this book is about. We’re looking at some of the biggest, the smallest, the longest, the shortest, and the weirdest things about our language. (Mostly English, since that’s what you’re reading right now.) We’re parading around the great and strange things that we’ve done with nothing more than our minds and our words, because they deserve to be celebrated. If we can’t spend all of our time marveling at the concept of language itself, the least we can do is commemorate the record-breaking uses of it. All right, that’s enough abject seriousness from all of us, your humble compilers of this tome you now hold. From here on, we promise to spice things up with the occasional, well-timed joke and what-have-you. Enjoy these mind-blowing words, phrases, books, www.ZTCprep.com albums, stories, puzzles, games, and whatever else we manage to find and toss in here. We promise only the best. www.ZTCprep.com Twelve of the Most Popular Passwords (and Why They’re Awful) Computer security sucks; there’s no doubt about that. That’s why businesses tend to pay people to take care of it for them. Unfortunately for us regular people, that’s not really an option. You can try bugging your family member who “knows about these things,” but that only works a couple of times before they finally build an effigy of you and start sticking its head in their processor fan. So it’s up to you to figure it out for yourself, and that’s where things fall apart. The average person knows somewhere between jack and crap about computer security, and that’s how we’ve ended up with a world full of people running out-of-date antivirus software (or none at all) and choosing awful passwords like the ones below. (For the record, computer security experts say that the strongest passwords are actually phrases made up of random common words separated by spaces, like “toaster mustache accent pistol,” for example. They also happen to be much easier to remember than “Ge-&930!xq,” or whatever, which is totally not our office mainframe password. We hope.) These passwords aren’t necessarily the most common passwords ever (since that tends to vary based on factors like the year, the age of the user, geographic location, etc.), but they are the ones that show up over and over in the databases of sites that get hacked. Whatever you do, don’t set your password as … 12. “Princess” or “Dragon” Apparently there are a lot of medieval fantasy fans roaming the Internet. Who knew? There’s nothing wrong with getting down with some Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, but at least try to pick something that isn’t one of the two defining characteristics of the genre. Hell, even Shrek is about a guy (ogre) saving a princess (ogre) from a dragon (with a donkey fetish). Ask any five-year-old to describe a standard fantasy story and count how long it takes for them to get to either “princess” or “dragon.” If you’re a fantasy fan and a hacker knows it, that’s how long it’ll take them to figure your password out. Therefore, by our logic, a five-year-old could hack your password. 11. “Sex” Everyone does it. (Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot of people, anyway.) Also, everyone’s here because of it, which is gross to think about, so just ignore that part. Point is, it’s on everybody’s mind pretty often. It’s not like ALF or Wham! or something. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever hear, “Hey, remember sex? Whatever happened to that?” But maybe you just think that highly of sex. Maybe it’s your favorite full-contact sport. But guess what? It’s everybody’s favorite full-contact sport. It’s a rare bird indeed who says, “Sex? Nah. Tried it, didn’t like it.” If you really think this is a unique, original password, we’re wondering if your village elders know you’ve snuck a computer into the community, Jebediah. 10. “Baseball” or “Football” Hey, so you’re a sports fan? That’s great! All those teams and numbers and stuff should give you some great material for a password. And yet many people apparently don’t bother in the slightest, and just go with the actual name of the sport they enjoy. That’s like loving ice cream and also choosing “ice cream” as your favorite flavor. Seriously, pick your favorite team or player and one of their records or some stats or something, then mash them together, and there’s a password that’s at least marginally better than just “baseball” or “football.” 9. “LetMeIn” We don’t know what’s more disappointing: How terrible this password is, or the fact that they didn’t say “please.” Talk about rude. Machines have feelings, too, according to Robocop, Terminator 2, and Battlestar Galactica. But still, who comes up with something like this, besides Ali Baba? At least he and the forty thieves had a kind of clever password. (Open Sesame, open says-a-me. Get it? It took us way too long to figure out.) “LetMeIn” is just lazy and kind of jerkish. It’d be nice if computers locked these people out of their accounts solely out of spite. 8. “Monkey” www.ZTCprep.com We get it, monkeys are cute and everything, but password-worthy? In a world of things like kittens and puppies and whatever baby sloths are called? We’ll give you a minute to go search for baby sloth pictures on the Internet … Back yet? They’re adorable, right? Anyway, you’d think people cared a lot more about other kinds of animals than monkeys, but apparently not.