Factoid of the day: The members of the Philological Society of London (compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary) decided in 1857 that existing dictionaries were so poor that a total reassessment of the language was needed. They thought they'd release their dictionary within a decade, but it took five years for them to reach "ant". The final section (Wise to Wyzden) was completed in 1928 (four teams were working in parallel; the team responsible for X, Y and Z completed their work in 1921).

Incidentally, the last word in this dictionary was zyxt, meaning a miniscule pimple on the tip of your ass that simply refuses to go away (really!).