Joshua from Jacksonville, Florida, has fond memories of long dinners in Italy that left him with a sense of abbiocco, an Italian word for “that drowsy, full feeling after a satisfying meal.” The Dutch word uitbuiken means “to sit back and relax after dinner,” connoting the idea of comfortably pushing away from the table and perhaps loosening one’s belt. Joshua is also a fan of the Japanese word yugen, sometimes translated as “a feeling of profound and mysterious beauty.” For further reading about feelings in various languages, check out The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith (Bookshop|Amazon) and Translating Happiness: A Cross-Cultural Lexicon of Well-Being by Tim Lomas (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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