jupinalle
n.— «In most languages the terms used for mobile phones reflect their two salient features: mobility and intimacy. Finnish teenagers called mobile phones “jupinalle” (meaning yuppie teddy bears); now they call them “kannykka” or “kanny”, a Nokia trademark that passed into generic parlance and means extension of the hand. In German, a mobile is a “handy”; in Arabic it’s “el mobile”, but also “sayaar” or “makhmul”, terms that refer to portability. In Japanese it is “keitai denwa”, a carried telephone. It all adds up to an exhilarating feeling of liberty: call anyone, any time, from anywhere.» —“Never Alone” The Age (Australia) May 15, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
Default as a noun and default as a verb are the same word, with a familiar English stress shift: nouns often take first-syllable stress, while verbs often take second-syllable stress, as with the different pronunciations of record. A New York City...