A group of magpies is called a tiding, one of ravens an unkindness, one of turtledoves a pitying, one of starlings a murmuration, one of swans a lamentation, one of ponies a string, one of rattlesnakes a rhumba, one of crows a murder, one of cobras a quiver, one of foxes a skulk, one of emus a mob, one of elks a gang, one of cats a clowder, one of flamingoes a pat, and one of bears a sleuth. Groups of geese are named in a peculiar manner; when they are on the ground they are called a "gaggle", but in the air they are called a "skein". (source)

Viking ships were steered by rudders on the right side, which the Vikings called styrbord, Old Norse for "steer side", from which the English word "starboard" comes. The Vikings docked their ships on the left side, which they called the ladebord, the "loading side". This eventually became the English "larboard", which sounded so much like "starboard" that it caused problems. Eventually, the British Admiralty ordered that the left side be known as the "port" side. (source)

The word "daisy" comes from the Old English "daeges eage", meaning "day's eye", as it reminded people of the sun.

The word "nice" originally mention "foolish". In the 15th century, the word came to mean "coy", and in the 16th century, "fastidious." By the 18th century the word had assumed its modern meaning. (source)

Many European advances during the Middle Ages were made possible by the Moorish occupation of Spain. The most important was the use of Arabic numerals. The Moors also brought other discoveries to Europe, which is reflected by the fact that words such as "algebra", "lute", and "magazine" are of Arabic origin. The Moors also introduced the game of chess into Europe.

The word "spa" comes from the Belgian town of Spa, in the Ardennes, whose mineral springs and baths were popular among the wealthy starting in the 18^th century. (source)

The words canteloupe, cashmere, champagne, cherry, coach, cologne, copper, and currants are derived from place names. There are many other words derived from place names that start with the other 25 letters of the alphabet as well. (source)

The word "holiday" comes from "holy day". During the Middle Ages, there were over 50 "holy days" and festival days, exclusive of Sundays, every year. This meant that peasants would only work for 260 days out of the year.

The "sh" sound, as in the word "ship", can be represented by eight different combinations of letters in English, as in the words ship, suspicious, ocean, anxious, sure, conscience, notion, and issue.

Until around the end of the nineteenth century, the word abacot was defined in many dictionaries as a cap of state formerly used by English kings, wrought in the figure of two crowns. However, in 1882 Sir James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, discovered that neither the word abacot or the object that it refers to are real. In a 1548 history of the kings of England by Edward Hall, the printer mistook the words a bicocket, which is a type of helmet, for abococket, which eventually made its way into dictionaries as abacot. (source)

Shakespeare used around 29,000 different words in his plays. About 6,000 words only appear once. About 10,000 words are not found in any surviving English literature prior to Shakespeare. (source)

English is the only language that capitalises the first person singular, "I". (source)

Spaghetti means "little strings" in Italian.

The word "dunce", meaning a dull-witted or ignorant person, comes from the name of John Duns Scotus (1265-1308), one of the greatest minds of his time. Scotus, born in Scotland, wrote treatises on grammar, logic, metaphysics, and theology. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and pursued his master's degree in theology at the University of Paris where, in 1303, he became embroiled in one of the most heated disputes of the day. France's King Philip IV had moved to tax the Church in order to finance his war with England; in response, Pope Boniface VIII threatened to excommunicate him. For supporting the pope, Duns Scotus was banished from France. He later assumed a university professorship in Cologne. The term "dunce" was coined two centuries later by people who disagreed with Scotus' teachings and his defence of the papacy. To them, any of his followers (a "Duns man" or "Dunce") was dull-witted, "incapable of scholarship and stupid". (source)

The word "kindergarten" comes from the German for "children's garden". Friedrich Froebel, who coined the term, originally was planning to use the term "Kleinkinderbeschäftigungsanstalt" instead. (source)

The words "best" and "worst" are both synonyms and antonyms. The two words are best known as opposite adjectives, but as verbs, both words mean "to beat".

The largest number in the English language with a word naming it is a googolplex. This number is equal to 10 to the power of a googol, or 10 to the power of 10¹⁰⁰. This number would be written as 1 followed by 10¹⁰⁰ zeroes (except that, as there are far fewer particles in the universe than there are zeroes in a googolplex, the number could never be written out in full). The names "googol" and "googolplex" were both suggested in the 1930s by Milton Sirotta, the nine-year-old nephew of mathematician Dr. Edward Kasner. (source)

Postcard depicting Jumbo the elephant, killed in St. Thomas, September 15, 1885.

The word "jumbo" comes from the name of Jumbo the circus elephant. Jumbo was killed on September 15, 1885, after being hit by a locomotive in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. In 1985, a life-size (3.35 metres tall) plaster statue of Jumbo was unveiled in St. Thomas. It was sculpted in New Brunswick and, ironically, was transported to St. Thomas entirely by truck. (source)

The word "posh" dates from the 19th century, as a slang term for a low-denomination coin. For some unknown reason, later on in the century, it came to connote a dandy, and from there evolved to mean stylish. The modern sense of the word was first used in Punch magazine on September 25, 1918. There is an urban legend that the word "posh" is an acronym for "port out, starboard home" on tickets to India that would entitle the bearers to avoid the hot sun going both out and back, but there is no contemporary evidence to support this derivation. (source)

One of the possible etymologies for the word "lackey" is from the Arabic al-qadi, meaning "the judge".

The word "dandelion" comes from the supposed resemblance of the leaf spikes of this plant to a lion's tooth, or, in French, dent de lion. (source)

The carat was derived from the weight of a seed of the carob tree. The weight of each bean is quite consistent, with about 142 beans to the ounce. (source)

In the thirteenth century, the word "girl" meant any young person, female or male. (source)

The word "quilt" originally referred to the bedding underneath a sleeper, not the covering on top of a sleeper. The word comes from the Latin culcita, "mattress". (source)

Until recently, the word "sophisticated" meant "false".

Until 1898, an average score for a hole in golf was called a bogey (Scottish for ghost). A modern ball was introduced in 1898 that took about one fewer strokes to reach the hole, so the new standard was called par (short for parity). (source)