World Kindness Day

13th Nov 2020

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

Spanish word of the week: collar

11th Nov 2020

This week’s Spanish word of the week is el collar NOUN necklace; collar Collar covers two different English concepts: necklace and collar (There are lots of words in Spanish which similarly cover more than one English concept): Llevaba un collar de rubíes imponente. She was… Read More

What a coronacoaster of a year!

10th Nov 2020

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

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

10th Nov 2020

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

The year of lockdown

10th Nov 2020

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

Spanish word of the week: receta

4th Nov 2020

This week’s Spanish word of the week is la receta NOUN recipe; prescription The ‘false friend’ that we will be looking at today is receta. In English it means either recipe or prescription. Here are some examples to help you use it… Read More

7 US political terms to baffle Brits

2nd Nov 2020

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

Spanish word of the week: ojalá

28th Oct 2020

ojalá EXCLAMATION I hope; if only This is one of the many Spanish words which originate from Arabic (O Allah!). Originally it might have been used in fervent prayer, but now it means little more than I hope or the slightly more emotional if only. Don’t forget… Read More

Months of awareness

28th Oct 2020

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