A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word century comes from the Latin centum, meaning one hundred. Century is sometimes abbreviated as c.
Fimbulvetr is the immediate prelude to the events of Ragnarök in Norse mythology.
The Swedish Academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body that chooses the laureates for the annual Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in memory of the donor Alfred Nobel.
An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include eponymous and eponymic.
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning. Words are considered synonymous in only one particular sense: for example, long and extended in the context long time or extended time are synonymous, but long cannot be used in the phrase extended family. Synonyms with exactly the same meaning share a seme or denotational sememe, whereas those with inexactly similar meanings share a broader denotational or connotational sememe and thus overlap within a semantic field. The former are sometimes called cognitive synonyms and the latter, near-synonyms, plesionyms or poecilonyms.
Yo is a slang interjection, commonly associated with North American English. It was popularized by the Italian-American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s.
Xmas is a common abbreviation of the word Christmas. It is sometimes pronounced, but Xmas, and variants such as Xtemass, originated as handwriting abbreviations for the typical pronunciation. The 'X' comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Christós, which became Christ in English. The suffix -mas is from the Latin-derived Old English word for Mass.
Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier". Such words designed to indicate large quantities can be called "indefinite hyperbolic numerals".
Uff da! (sometimes also spelled oof-da, oofda, oofala, oof-dah, oofdah, huffda, uff-da, uffda, uff-dah, ufda, ufdah, or uf daa) is a Scandinavian exclamation or interjection used to express dismay, typically upon hearing bad news. Of Norwegian origin, the phrase was brought by Scandinavian Americans to the Upper Midwest, New England, and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States during the 19th century, where its meaning was broadened to express also surprise, astonishment, exhaustion, or relief.
A bogle, boggle, or bogill is a Northumbrian and Scots term for a ghost or folkloric being, used for a variety of related folkloric creatures including Shellycoats, Barghests, Brags, the Hedley Kow and even giants such as those associated with Cobb's Causeway. They are reputed to live for the simple purpose of perplexing mankind, rather than seriously harming or serving them.
A Scandinavian mile is a unit of length common in Norway and Sweden, but not Denmark. Today, it is standardised as 1 mil being 10 kilometres, but it had different values in the past.
Braies are a type of trouser worn by Celtic and Germanic tribes in antiquity and by Europeans subsequently into the Middle Ages. In the later middle ages they were used exclusively as undergarments. Braies generally hung to the knees or mid-calf, resembling what are today called shorts. They were made of leather, wool, or, in later years, cotton or linen. They were adopted by the Romans as braccae. By the 11th century, Braies were ankle-length pants held in place by a cord fitted through the top. People from upper classes wore more fitting braies while people of the lower classes typically wore loose braies.
Canepin is a fine leather made from the epidermis of sheep and goats. It is used to make women's gloves and to test the quality of scalpels. The word comes from the French word canepin, meaning "skin".
In the contemporary English language, the noun Polack is a derogatory, mainly North American, reference to a person of Polish origin. It is an anglicisation of the Polish masculine noun Polak, which denotes a person of Polish ethnicity and typically male gender. However, the English loanword is considered an ethnic slur.
Det Norske Akademis ordbok, abbreviated NAOB, is one of the largest dictionaries of the Norwegian language and covers its most widely used written variety, Bokmål/Riksmål, which is used by around 90% of Norwegians. It was published as a freely available online dictionary in 2018 by the Norwegian Academy and Kunnskapsforlaget with support from the Parliament of Norway. Knut Olav Åmås has described the dictionary as the Norwegian counterpart of Svenska Akademiens ordbok and the Oxford English Dictionary.
Slavicisms or Slavisms are words and expressions borrowed or derived from Slavic languages.
