dipstick survey
n.— «In a dipstick survey conducted by BT, English came out tops with 80 per cent non-English speakers listening to English and 20 per cent non-Hindi speakers listening to Hindi.» —“What’s our lingo?” by Edison Thomas in Bangalore Times of India Sept. 15, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
The English language has been greatly enriched by borrowings from the languages of Asia. Barely scratching the surface, we have from Japan skosh, tycoon, tsunami, origami, yen, kimono, futon, and karaoke. From Chinese comes yen, kowtow, gung ho, and...