gerb
n.— «We go to a testing zone to light a lively gerb (a fire fountain named after the French word for “spray”).…In one room, I meet a jovial French couple who are busy sticking fuses into pink tubes which turn out to be multi-coloured gerbs.» —“The retired clergyman whose fireworks factory has made people go ‘Ooooohh’ for 50 years” by Robert Hardman Daily Mail (United Kingdom) Nov. 1, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Ahmed, a native speaker of Arabic who also speaks French, wonders how he should pronounce words from those languages when speaking English. For example, should he model the pronunciation for the name of the writer Kahlil Ghibran the country of Qatar...
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes lots of words borrowed or adapted from French. Such linguistic mixing often happens when languages brush up against each other and speakers reach...
In French, it’s “gerbe”.
And although it’s not about English, some may find this fun… The verb form, “gerber” is a colloquial and very common way to say “to vomit” (as in many other languages, in French there are many, many ways to say “to vomit”). But it also has a different meaning in more technical language, meaning “to stack” (for example boxes of goods in a warehouse). You can often see the expression “ne pas gerber” (do not stack) printed on packing crates and boxes. My first inclination is always to wonder why they think I’m about to barf…