kanny
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
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...