Tag archives: Gaelic

Lost in translation. . . so I was

We were lost – having turned off a brand new and completely empty motorway that cut across the lush green hills of the West coast of Ireland in a quest to visit my Irish mother’s third cousins twice removed. So we finally pulled up next to an old road sign, which confusingly said: ← Knockroe           Knockroe [...]

Posted on: November 25 2011 | Posted by: | Comments: 7 | Categories: Varieties of English | Tags: , , , , ,

Flannel trousers are not English!

One of the facets of English that makes a job working with dictionary data so interesting is its readiness to appropriate loanwords from other languages – seeing the etymology of a familiar word such as ‘ketchup’ for example, and finding it probably has its origins in Chinese. Everybody needs good neighbours We see plenty of [...]

Posted on: October 6 2011 | Posted by: | Comments: 1 | Categories: Word origins | Tags: , , , , ,