Education Jokes

The Mysteries of the English Language

There's no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither
apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries
in France.

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't
sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its
paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing
rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor
is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of
tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One
goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? One index, two
indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one
amend, that you comb through the annals of history but not a
single annal?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but
one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian
eat?

If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be
committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what
language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a
wise man and a
wise guy are opposites?

How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot
and quite a few are alike?

How can the weather be hot as Hell one day and cold as Hell
another?

How you noticed that we talk about certain things only when
they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a
strapful gown? Met a
sung hero or experienced requited love?

Have you ever run into someone who was dis-combobulated,
grunted, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who
ARE spring chickens or who
would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in
which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you
fill in a form by filling out and in which an alarm clock
goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it
reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course,
isn't a race at all).

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but
when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I
wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay,
I end it!