Marta, who studies English in Kyiv, Ukraine, says she was reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (Bookshop|Amazon) when she encountered the word parasol, noting its similarity to a Ukrainian word for “umbrella,” парасоля. Both...
A South Carolina teen calls to ask why the English language has a word meaning “to throw someone out of a window,” but no word for “the day after tomorrow.” The word defenestrate, from Latin fenestra, “window,”...
Mara, a student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo now studying at the University of North Alabama, thought Google Translate rendered the French for “peanut butter” as peanut leg. Instead of using it to translate the French word...
Do you describe someone with a sloppy appearance as being unkempt or unkept? A garden that’s been neglected might be described as unkept, but when it comes to personal appearance, someone who’s disheveled is far more commonly described...
While fishing from a jetty, Maria in San Antonio, Texas, wondered about this name for a structure extending from the shore out into the water. The word jetty comes to us via the French word jeter, meaning “to throw” (the dance step...
Nancy in Dallas, Texas, shares a funny story about a preschooler’s misunderstanding of the expression in the meantime, meaning “in the interim.” The mean in meantime derives from a Latin medius, “in the middle,” the...