Karen from Santa Barbara, California, wonders about the verb to retire. Why doesn’t it mean to tire all over again? The Spanish word for retirement, jubilación, is cognate with the English word jubilation. This is part of a complete episode...
Susan in Traverse City, Michigan, wonders if there’s a single English word that denotes the relationship between two mothers-in-law, two fathers-in-law, or a mother-in-law and father-in-law. Co-mother seems too vague, and the psychologists’ terms...
Placer mining is a method of extracting gold from alluvial deposits. You might guess that the word is pronounced with a long a, but used in this context, it’s actually a short vowel, rhyming with gasser. The term derives from a Spanish word for that...
The name of that horse with a light gold coat, the palomino, derives from Spanish for young dove, because these animals share similar coloring. In the same way, a sorrel horse has the same color as a certain kind of sorrel plant. The names for the...
In Spanish, taco de ojo literally means “taco of the eye,” but in Mexican slang, it’s the equivalent of English eye candy, or someone who’s very nice to look at. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Mexican Spanish “Taco de Ojo” Means...
The Spanish term for rollercoaster, montaña rusa, or “Russian mountain,” refers to the earliest versions of rollercoasters, which were sledding Russian slopes built from wood and covered with ice. Oddly enough, the Russian for roller coaster, ...