10.24.2007

Give me your password

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from the ISP of one of my personal email accounts, notifying me that my email password was now not sufficently secure enough for them to deliver my email and that if I wanted to keep the email address I needed to change my password. (Don't worry, it wasn't a phishing scam - I checked.)

WTF?? I have a pretty good password - 6 letters/numbers, not really something that would be easily traceable to anything in my life. Apparently there are many who keep passwords that are a combination of their birthday, or their pet's/spouse's/child's names, crap like that.

Not me - mine was pretty bullet-proof. But not according to them. So I had to change it.

So I got to thinking about words and things, then ran across this random bit of trivia:

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.

Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.

The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. (This little fact also applies to children under the age of 20.)

There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein” the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

Facetious is the only word in the English language that contains all vowels, except y, in the order they appear in the alphabet.

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

The word "bookkeeping" has three consecutive sets of repeating letters. The only English word to do so.


So there you go - interesting (mostly) word facts. I imagine some of them are urban myths, etc, so don't bother calling me out.

What do YOU use for your password?? Let me know - and then tell me where you bank. I'll test your password security - free of charge.

3 comments:

That One Guy said...

bookkeeping - along with its derivatives of course...

OneHungMan said...

Passwords are weird. On a couple of sites, OneHung couldn't tell you his password unless his fingers can touch the keys.

Scott Hinrichs said...

The only English word with a triple is goddessship (three s letters in sequence). I got that from my 9th grader.