Woman baffled after learning why we abbreviate 1st, 2nd and 3rd like that
Rhianna Benson
Featured Image Credit: Delmaine Donson/stocknshares/Getty Images
There are certain facts and obscurities we encounter in daily life that the majority of us simply take at face value and ask no questions about.
Things like why the sky is blue, how fish can breathe underwater, why we need to pay tax...
While, of course, there are scientific explanations of such phenomena, I'm willing to bet that an almighty proportion of the population wouldn't know where to begin when it comes to their thoughts on the matter.
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And on the subject of fun facts we previously struggled to get our heads around, this week, a woman on TikTok has been left utterly blown away after discovering the real reason we abbreviate the words 'first', 'second' and 'third', to '1st', '2nd' and '3rd' when writing or typing it.
On top of this, amid her groundbreaking realisation, the woman also noticed that there's no consistency between the first four numbers - '1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th' - but then we get a bit of repetition when we hit '5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th' for another, very specific reason.
Taking to the video-sharing app, the social media user claimed that she was 'done with the internet', after going '42 years' without ever having solved that mystery... until now, that is.
It turns out, we abbreviate these words - as well as every number that comes after it - to a select two letters, because they're the two that end that word in the first place.
Still confused? Let me try to help you out.
So, we write '1st' instead of the word 'first', because the last two letters of the word are 's' and 't'.
In the same way, being that the word 'second' ends in an 'n' and a 'd', we write '2nd' when jotting down the date.
And so on, and so forth...
As I say, however, a TikTok-using woman - who goes by the username @officiallilwolf - was left blown-away after making the realisation, penning in the caption of a hilarious video: "Took my 42 years to learn that the st and nd in first and second are b/c it's the last two letters in the word spelled out."
Thankfully, however, she received many comments from viewers, the majority of whom claim they were also none the wiser about the niche fact.
"Thanks to you only took me 40 years to find that out," one admitted.
Another simply exclaimed: "Wahhhh."
Anyone else second guessing everything they thought they knew about the world? Me too, babe. Me too.