Phrontistery --a word my pompous nature prompts me to use more often than simpler words such as school, college, university and institute-- is where one studies. While checking its etymology, I was surprised by American Heritage, my sure etymological compendium on the Web, not listing the word as an...

STEVEDORE NOUN: One who is employed in the loading or unloading of ships. TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: ste·ve·dored, ste·ve·dor·ing, ste·ve·dores To load or unload the cargo of (a ship) or to engage in the process of loading or unloading such a vessel. ETYMOLOGY: Spanish est...

Why Persian? Because, in the 19th century and before, Persian was an official language in northern India. Persian isn't a Semitic language, of course, it's an Indo-European one, but it did borrow a lot of words and grammar from Arabic, and this suffix -i is one of the things that Persian borrows fr...

An article I read in a Japanese newspaper today set me wondering why people from Pakistan are called Pakistani but not Pakistanese, like Japanese and Portugese. I quite realise -ī is an adjectivising suffix in Semitic languages. Does this mean Pakistanis themselves call Pakistanis after a Semitic la...

#10 -- I don't bowl, and I am no sailor, so again I'm clueless. I think I know which unit is three times as large as nautical mile but cannot figure out why it has stronger connection with bowling than with any other team sports like baseball and football. Yes, Katy. I got the 11th right after I su...

11. Stand at a slant or thin

7, 8, 10 and 11: I haven't solve. . .
I think I know the answers but eliciting them from my brain is not an easy task. Amazing that the rest was not a problem at all.

Hmmm, I regard Wiki as a handy information source but not the final word of anything. Your Web site looks plausible too. Are we then to look for the scripts of the speeches by the two?

Wikipedia is of opinion that the term was first used by Mussolini. The term was first used by Benito Mussolini, in November 1936, when he spoke of a Rome-Berlin axis in reference to the treaty of friendship signed between Italy and Germany on October 25, 1936. He may have been thinking of a North-S...

Okay, guys and thank you! Next time I will do my homework myself. But heaven knows I am lazy.

Could a fellow Agoran with sinological bent elucidate what 很棒 means? A Chinese I chatted with referred to me as "你真的很棒" in an amicable context. In our Sino-Japanese dictionaries, 很 is not an amicable letter with meanings disobey, invade and atrocious. I hope someone could help me to update...

Here is one of the Greek words I first came across in English. hoi polloi SYLLABICATION: hoi pol·loi PRONUNCIATION: hoi pə-loi NOUN: The common people; the masses. ETYMOLOGY: Greek, the many : hoi, nominative pl. of ho, the; see so- in Appendix I + polloi, nominative pl. of polus, many; see pel-1 in...

Alcione....

I always thought it was Alcinoe. That's how studying foreign names in katakana ends up sometimes.

Flma

Definition quoted below. The most frequent sense I hear the word is used in is, "involuntary standby from working." I came across this word while a server breakdown furloughed me at the office. No cure is better than venting it out as a sublimated language fun. SYLLABICATION: fur·lough PRO...

Ι'll bite it if you do.

As becoming of the annual symbol according to Chinese calendar....

BD, maybe it depends on the font your PC uses to view that Japanese page. Check if your browser can use Shift-JIS codes.

Flam,
who does not know how to add that font to your PC, in case you don't have it. Call it homework.