squints
P, 1.
L, 2.
O, 3.
V, 4.
E, 5.
R, also 5?
squints
P, 1.
L, 2.
O, 3.
V, 4.
E, 5.
R, also 5?
LOL, I guess I know lots of words but I can’t count to 6!
IIRC, Harry was an answer earlier this year
Only in the UK; the NYT picked a different solution because they thought it was obscure or confusing. They also get stung when “fetus” showed up shortly after the SCOTUS Roe v Wade leak.
It’s a shame they didn’t do a different word for the UK when the answer was HUMOR. There were a lot of people over here who didn’t find the US spelling funny…
The word ‘vellard’ is supposed to be an old word meaning ‘causeway’ or ‘embankment’, something to actually keep the seas out, reclaiming land.
Except, the word doesn’t exist in English. Other than when referring to Hornby Vellard, a project that Governor William Hornby started in 1782 to embank the seven islands of then-Bombay City and bring them together into one large island.
Vellard is allegedly a corruption of the Portuguese ‘vallado’, meaning a fence or embankment. But… vallado is a Spanish word, not Portuguese.
India was colonized by the British, Portuguese, and French, whose control lasted till being kicked out by the independent Indians, and also by the Dutch, Danish, Austrian and Swedes before they were kicked out by the other colonizers. There were no Spanish colonizers, so Spanish words entering local usage is an extremely rare behaviour, this ‘vellard’ being the only example showing up till now.
Had to google to check if you weren’t joking… But it’s true.
Literally, a norange became an orange through people confusing the n as being part of the article rather than the noun, and the new word was born.
Was intrigued because the word norange is very similar to and thus derives from the Sanskrit narangi (Orange Tree) via the Arabic naranj.
That’s interesting! It’s called naranja in Spanish, too
Got curious why the Swedish word is so different, we seem to call it “chinese apple”
I call apples, “potatoes of the tree”.
I think you mean a potato not an apple
D’oh!
Corrected now
It’s one of the few French words I remember from my three years of taking French in elementary school.
Purple carrots used to be the norm until a royal family wanted them to be orange.
Cookie Monster’s actual name is Sid.
Telly Monster originally had TV attenta coming out of his head and having whirling eyes.
Peach pits contain cyanide and can kill you if you ingest enough of them.
You can brew the flowers of a chrysanthemum but not the leaves.
10% of the world is left handed.
Yeah, that’s why.
Did you know that George V and Czar Nicholas II of Russia looked identical? And did you know they sometimes did the “Twin thing of switching places”?
The infinity sign is called the lemniscate.
The plastic or metal tips at both ends of shoelaces are called aglets.
These date back ages and were also used to showcase wealth in the Roman era. During the late medieval ages, figurines would be carved on them. Shakespeare called them aglet babies in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.
These are different from aiguillettes, which are decorative in nature and used at the ends of (or refer to the whole of) braided ornamental cords used in military and/or other uniforms.