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A Swedish idiosyncrasy
The Swedish word for grapefruit is grapefrukt. The Swedish word for grape is druva or vindruva. But Swedes often use the word grape in English to mean grapefruit. See below: If you requested half a...
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Zarf
A zarf (plural: zarfs, zuruuf, zarves) aka coffee sleeves, coffee clutches, coffee cozies, hot cup jackets, coffee collars, and cup holders, are roughly cylindrical sleeves that fit tightly over...
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Niblings
I have seen the term nibling used more frequently over the past year. Coined by Samuel E. Martin, a professor at Yale University in around 1951, nibling is a gender-neutral term, replacing niece and...
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In Swedish, the word recept means both prescription (medicine) and recipe (cooking). This means that the word receipt in English is confusing for them. They want to use it for recipe (cooking) and...
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Most beautiful words in the English language
One of my students asked me recently about my favourite words in the English language. Some sprang to mind immediately – home, hope, mother, peace – perhaps because of their meaning Others came to me...
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Where do words come from?
This is a discussion my students and I have fairly often. Who names things? And how does everyone know what they are called? For example, who decided that a table would be called a table? Why did we...
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One of my favourite smells
My others are just-mowed grass sheets after having dried in the sun freshly-brewed or ground coffee freshly baked bread plastic dolls sun tan lotion Vicks Vaporub Johnson’s baby powder hot asphalt...
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Annoying Jargon
Do you hate going forward? Do you shudder when a colleague wants to reach out? Are you disgusted by low-hanging fruit, sick of being on the team, and reluctant to open the kimono? Does the phrase...
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Venomous vs poisonous
Photo by Adam Baugh These are two of South Africa’s most venomous snakes, a female boomslang to the left (seen because the female boomslang is brown and the male is green) and a black mamba to the...
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Neologisms
A neologism is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted into mainstream language. It is not...
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It’s Pareidolia I tell you!
Pareidolia (/pærɪˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists...
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Eggcorns
see source in image The misuse of certain phrases in English is something that really gets my goat. Some examples: baited breath instead of bated breath here here instead of hear hear step foot instead...
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Origin of the word ‘selfie’
It seems almost certain the selfie originated in Australia with a young drunk first using the word to describe a self-portrait photograph more than a decade ago. Oxford Dictionaries revealed the...
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Words I have seen for the first time recently
floordrobe (common in homes with teenagers I imagine) zoombies (Zoom zombies) image architect (stylist) sidestream (I have a separate blog post on this) phygital (where physical meets digital)...
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‘Queenly’ terms
My students have been asking me for the past few days about terms they have heard during broadcasts regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen regnant – a queen who reigns in her own right....
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