I’ve put a new category in: Word of the Day. Words often occur to me that I think just about any English-speaker would know but are probably unfamiliar to those for whom English is something learned in school. The word for today is “spate”. Earlier ones I’ve thought of are “mite”, not the insect but in the usage, “It’s a mite cold in here.” Also “miffed” for “put out” or “irriatated”.
I came up with this is writing something earlier to a listserv on culture where a Russian foreign exchange student, when asked how Russians express Word of the Day as a class exercise (slovo dn’a), simply said, “We don’t do that.” Oh. Well, I think it’s fun and I’d like to introduce it to my blog, now that I’ve determined to put something in every day. (see the category Ramblings for a recent update)
Of course, such words in other languages are more than welcome. This also gets close to the They Have a Word For It idea where languages tend to have some words hard to translate into other languages, like Eng homesick, Ger. Gemutlichkeit, etc. (See the book by that title by Rheingold)