In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English embarrassed and Spanish embarazada 'pregnant'; English parents versus Portuguese parentes and Italian parenti ; English demand and French demander 'ask'; and English gift, German Gift 'poison', and Norwegian gift 'married'.
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The word is a portmanteau of back and acronym.
Geordie is a nickname for a person from the Tyneside area of North East England, and the dialect used by its inhabitants, also known in linguistics as Tyneside English or Newcastle English. There are different definitions of what constitutes a Geordie. The term is used and has been historically used to refer to the people of the North East. A Geordie can also specifically be a native of Tyneside and the surrounding areas. Not everyone from the North East of England identifies as a Geordie.
The Meaning of Liff is a humorous dictionary of toponymy and etymology, written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, published in the United Kingdom in 1983 and the United States in 1984.
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of toponyms, including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of any geographical feature, and full scope of the term also includes proper names of all cosmographical features.
The toponymy of England derives from a variety of linguistic origins. Many English toponyms have been corrupted and broken down over the years, due to language changes which have caused the original meanings to be lost. In some cases, words used in these place-names are derived from languages that are extinct, and of which there are no known definitions. Place-names may also be compounds composed of elements derived from two or more languages from different periods. The majority of the toponyms predate the radical changes in the English language triggered by the Norman Conquest, and some Celtic names even predate the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the first millennium AD.
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either homographs – words that have the same spelling – or homophones – words that have the same pronunciation –, or both. Using this definition, the words row, row and row are homonyms because they are homographs : so are the words see (vision) and sea, because they are homophones.
Bollocks is a word of Middle English origin, meaning "testicles". The word is often used figuratively in British English and Hiberno-English in a multitude of negative ways; it most commonly appears as a noun meaning "rubbish" or "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to describe something that is of poor quality or useless. It is also used in common phrases like "bollocks to this", which is said when quitting a task or job that is too difficult or negative, and "that's a load of old bollocks", which generally indicates contempt for a certain subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also appears in positive phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" or more simply "the bollocks", which will refer to something which is admired or well-respected.
Wanker is slang for "one who wanks (masturbates)", but is most often used as a general insult. It is a pejorative term of English origin common in Britain and other parts of the English-speaking world, including Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is synonymous with the insult tosser.
Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive is a historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and terms from Indian languages which came into use during the British rule in India.
Etymology is the study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, semiotics, and phonetics.
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British English date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.
The Latin adverb sic inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text, complete with any erroneous, archaic, or otherwise nonstandard spelling, punctuation, or grammar. It also applies to any surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might be interpreted as an error of transcription.
Stratton is a market town in Cornwall, England situated near the coastal town of Bude and the market town of Holsworthy. It was also the name of one of ten ancient administrative hundreds of Cornwall. The Battle of Stratton during the Civil War took place here on 16 May 1643.
Scratchy Bottom is a clifftop valley between Durdle Door and Bat's Head in Dorset, England. A dry valley in the chalk, it is surrounded by farmland at its sides and landward end, with cliffs at the seaward end.
An inherently funny word is a word that is humorous without context, often more for its phonetic structure than for its meaning.
Prawn is a common name for small aquatic crustaceans with an exoskeleton and ten legs, some of which are edible.
In etymology, back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the corresponding root word. The resulting is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889.
