One secret to writing well is … there is no secret! There’s no substitute for simply sitting down day after day to practice the craft and learn from your mistakes. Plus, childhood mixups around word definitions can lead to some funny stories...
Sauna is by far the most common everyday word adopted in English from Finnish. A distant second is sisu, a term for “grit” or “determination,” which is particularly associated with the hardiness and fortitude of Finns...
The slang term nation pops up several times in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a reduced form of a mild swear word. The word damnation was euphemized as tarnation, which was later shortened to nation. Nation in this sense goes back to the mid...
Careful what you criticize! Not long ago, some words that sound perfectly normal today were considered gauche and grating on the ear. If the complainers had had their way, we couldn’t say a word like pessimism or use contact as a verb! Also...
Finns say their word sisu meaning “guts” or “fortitude” characterizes their national identity. Does your culture have such a word, like the Portuguese term saudade, perhaps? This is part of a complete episode.