Wierd English

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Why English is so Hard to Learn

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail
18. After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


There is 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.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

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, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? You can make amends but not one amend.

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

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

And where are the people who ARE spring chickens or who actually WOULD hurt a fly? I meet individuals who CAN cut the mustard and whom I WOULD touch with a ten-foot pole, but I cannot talk about them in English.

Did you ever notice that we talk about certain things only when they’re absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown, met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever encountered someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable?

We drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.

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

If teachers taught, why don't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

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?

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

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 it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

The human race is not a race at all.

When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with quick?

And why, when I wind up my watch I start it, but when I wind up this item I end it?