Language Lovers

International Volunteer Day

International Volunteer Day (sometimes abbreviated to IVD) takes place annually on December 5th. It is an ‘International Day’ established by the United Nations to recognize and promote the contribution made by volunteers and voluntary organizations to the wellbeing of people across the globe. And, as it… Read More

11 words and phrases from Nottingham

Eh up, me duck! Here are a few words and phrases you might hear in Nottingham and the surrounding areas: 1. Eh up! Eh up is a friendly way of greeting someone: Eh up, Sam. Where are you off to? 2. cob A cob is a… Read More

World Kindness Day

This Friday, 13 November is World Kindness Day, an awareness day launched in 1998 with the aim of encouraging benevolent acts by individuals, organizations, and countries. Coming at a time of international crisis, when demonstrations of kindness – from the never-ceasing selflessness of frontline… Read More

Pass the sanny, Bruce: Oz has its own lingo for the pando

The coronavirus pandemic is a global phenomenon, but different countries have adopted different responses to it according to their local circumstances and traditions. This is true not only in terms of public-health measures, but also in terms of the language used to describe the disease and… Read More

What a coronacoaster of a year!

Over the last several months, when factories, offices, restaurants and other places of social gathering have been (intermittently) shut, people’s creativity has taken all sorts of unexpected directions. Anything goes in the quest to overcome that feeling of blursday, one uneventful day following another so that… Read More

The year of lockdown

It’s no surprise that quite a few of the words on Collins Word of the Year 2020 shortlist have one big thing in common: the pandemic. Something that changed everyone’s lives so profoundly – leaving no country or continent untouched – was bound to have a… Read More

7 US political terms to baffle Brits

The United States holds its presidential election on November 3rd after a long and sometimes rancorous campaign. While observers in Europe will have become accustomed by now to some of the terminology of the American political scene, with its caucuses, conventions, superdelegates, and running mates, some more arcane American political… Read More

Months of awareness

Last month, this month and the next two are great for practising Latin numerals, as you do: septem, octo, novem, decem (7, 8, 9, 10). But hang on a moment. Decem means ‘ten’, but December isn’t the tenth month. Or is it? Well, it was once, in the original Roman… Read More

‘Hepatomegaly’ and ‘hydronephrosis’ are among the most frequently looked-up words in September

You can get a certain insight into human nature from analysing the words that people look up in dictionaries. There are some words that seem to be of perennial interest, so if you compare the list of words that were looked up most often in March with the words that… Read More