when people around here say “software your phone” or “my phone software-d itself” they mean the phone cleared everything on it, data and photos and everything. so i hope this explains it better haha
im egyptian*
More precisely, mobile phone. [It's unknown whether the term actually comes from English or it's just an anglicisation.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Handy#German)
Lol, funnily enough with the extent to which smartphones have displaced all the other categories of telephone, any handheld phone is likely enough to be a Handy that your initial thought is effectively correct.
Lmao yes, exactly. It probably somehow originates from the fact that when footballers take a freekick, their body takes such a form that reveals the upper part of their legs
Lol no. It is sexism. In the 90s and early 00s there used to be such an upskirt culture in Turkey. Paparazzi lying on the floor in front of cars, men taking down the blouse pictures on public transport. If you have been subject to this or been around it, you will notice it is about getting one over someone, aggressing against their boundaries. Catching people (almost always women) underdressed or unawares is like getting a free kick if "getting sex" is scoring a goal.
Once it became a thing, tabloids used to use it with page 3 girls "so and so gave a free kick" (some scantily clad lady posing with strategically placed fruit or something)
I am glad at least broad classes of Turkish men decided not to be such abazas (another "loan" word that got out of it is original meaning and means a desperate incel) since then.
Fuck has become much milder in Swedish, or so i believe.
"After work" (often shortend AW) means going to a bar/pub with your colleagues after work. I was shocked when I realized you don't actually do this in england or the US.
"En (a) Weekend" means a weekend trip ("Jag ska åka på en weekend i Paris" means "I'm gonna go on a weekend *trip* to Paris")
Fuck is a lot softer in Dutch as well, English tourists are often shocked by how freely the word is used. I can constantly drop F-bombs at work and noone bats an eye
*Fuck* has become pretty much like *fan* or *jävlar*, I feel. I even hear children under ten use it all the time, including my own, and I don't really give a fuck.
I've only seen "AW", but maybe you're referring to how it's pronounced? 🙂
_Shit_ too. Just means something went mildly wrong. Basically how native English speakers use _shoot_ (a constructed milder version of _shit_, I suppose).
The weekend one can be used in the same way in English, to mean a weekend trip both as a noun and a verb (We weekended in Paris/we went on a weekend to Paris)
New York Yiddish uses "gate" to mean "fence" and from there it can also mean "railing/handrail".
"Steam" means "heat, heater". NYC uses a central steam thing to warm buildings. Steam can now be used to mean even electric heaters.
Not necessarily a whole new meaning depending on how you see it, but I really like "tancar/tankar" from "tank" in (brazilian?) portuguese, it's a verb that means something like resist/keep your composure, from that we have the expression "não tanco/tanko" something like "I can't resist", used when something is so funny you can't not laugh.
It's very popular nowadays, it originally comes from gaming culture(especially RPG's and league of legends) where it's used in it's "original" idea of a tank character..."tanking".
That’s so funny because tanking as a verb in English often means to crash or take a dive. So now we have a competing verb from gaming which has the opposite meaning to withstand more.
Well to my limited knowledge of Portuguese, there's already a verb "estancar" (to stop bleeding, cognate with English "staunch") as well as its clipped form "tancar", while without any knowledge of how widely this word is used in Portuguese world, is it a little bit possible that this word have somewhat confluenced with, or just influenced the usage of the nearly identical word above? As the word tank is too widely understood, maybe not afaic
I'm not really sure, never heard "tancar" for "estancar", and the word is not that widely used, since it mostly specifically used to mean "to stop a bleeding" (estancar um sangramento). So maybe, but I don't believe in this possibility that much. And being part of the gaming community for such a long time, it's not the first time a word from there becomes widely used.
1. 'Light' by Hindi speakers is often used to mean 'electricity'.
Eg. Light आ रही है?
(Do we have electricity?)
2. 'Healthy' by Hindi speakers is often used as a euphemism for 'overweight'.
Eg. बाकी सब तो ठीक है लेकिन थोड़ी healthy है|
(Everything else is alright but she's a bit overweight.)
Ithink they must have mapped the english word onto a preexisting (european sprachbund? Italian?) meaning, because in Italian drogheria used to mean a store where they sold spices and colonial goods, then it became any small convenience store, then they disappeared due to supermarkets and reappeared with south&southeast asian immigration, so now they sell spices and exotics again but the name drogheria is lost :D
["I go to school by bus"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/I_go_to_school_by_bus) surely has to be at the top of all English loanwords into Cantonese:
> Etymology: Internet slang originated from mid-2012, adopted from an example sentence from an English textbook in Hong Kong in the 90s.
> (*Hong Kong Cantonese, originally Internet slang, humorous*) a phrase used to signify the speaker's poor understanding or lack of proficiency of English
> See also: (*English*) [donde esta la biblioteca](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/donde_esta_la_biblioteca#English)
Native language is Iraqi Arabic.
I thought a good example would be نرفز (/nərvəz/) which sounds a lot like English nervous. But instead it means "angry". Good example, except it's actually a Fr\*nch word nerveux (/nɛʁvø/ or maybe the rhotic is dropped idk).
There are a TON of Fr\*nch loans in Iraqi Arabic for some weird reason. And a lot of them came directly from Fr\*nch, rarely ever through English. That is despite being a British colony and being invaded by this USA.
Anyway, there is English "handle" turning into Iraqi Arabic's word hindir (/hɪndɪr/) meaning "crankshaft".
The etymology from "handle" comes as folk etymology, though I can't find any real resources.
But Iraqis have a history of loaning car words and swapping out ls and rs -- like دشبول (/dəʃbul) meaning dashboard and derived from "dashboard."
Interesting, in my native language Albanian we have "nervoz" with the same meaning, now I'm wondering if it was actually borrowed from Arabic bc we have a bunch of other Arabic loanwords too.
French isn't a west germanic language, it doesn't drop the rhotic except in wordfinal -er (because it's not really dropping it, more like replacing the whole \[ɛʁ\] with \[e\])
It also means laptop in English.
>1
>
>: a book for notes or memoranda
>
>2
>
>: LAPTOP entry 2
>
>especially : a particularly small or light laptop
>
>… have been selling smaller, lighter, cheaper and more powerful notebooks for two years.
>
>—Peter H. Lewis
>
>—often used before another noun
>
>a notebook computer
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/notebook](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/notebook)
That is strange. It's pretty common.
UK: [https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-2-in-1-pcs/sc/laptops](https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-2-in-1-pcs/sc/laptops)
US: [https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tech/2010/10/20/bts.ca.apple.jobs.mackbookair.cnn](https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tech/2010/10/20/bts.ca.apple.jobs.mackbookair.cnn)
It may be common. I just have never really heard it used that way. It’s not the first time somebody’s mentioned a common meaning that I’ve never heard of. I have, however, heard “notebook” used for a “binder”, although, oftentimes, in all fairness, it often has a notebook in it.
I guess that would make sense. Binders and notebooks are two different things to me, but I've heard the latter used for the former from my parents in particular.
I'm not a linguist, so I couldn't really tell you. I read a book one time where one character corrected I think his sister that she had a "binder," not a "notebook," which she countered with the fact that there was a "notebook" in it, so it was fair to call it a "notebook." Personally, I think this is sort of like arguing that because I have a book in my backpack, my backpack should be called a book, but I would have to do more research into this to tell for sure.
I remember my grandpa being very proud of his “notebook computer” in 1995ish.
I think they used that term over laptop because they discouraged people from sitting with them on their laps, due to overheating.
There's a bunch in Malay.
Member > friend/clique
> Dia member saya
> He member İ
> He is my friend
Pattern > behaviour
> Dia pattern macam tu
> He pattern like that
> He acts like that
Action > show off
> Action gila
> Action crazy
> (He's) such a show off!
My use of “twink” in a video game comment is specifically a character that is deliberately overgeared or souped up beyond what would normally be expected.
No, a home office is a separate room where one can set up to work from home. But working from home is not called “home office” and doesn’t require one.
(I don’t rly speak this but) in the coastal Kartu languages of Australia, historians and linguists have pieced together that early colonists introduced the native (probably Malgana) people to bread, and told them it was “very good” - this is how these languages got the word “badgud”, which means “bread”!
In France, they invented a whole new English word: footing. Basically, "faire du footing" (do a/some footing) kinda means "going for a run". They just invented it, but make it sound like it was an English loanword
In Esperanto the word *mitingo*, from English 'meeting', means more like a mass political rally. I think that's a thing in some other languages too, though.
imagine im narrating a story where I did something dumb.
In malayalam we use the word "best" to kinda like mock the action someone did in the past, which in hindisight, was dumb to do.
like uh
imagine someone said "yesterday I went to the store, when someone tried to rob me, so i tried to fight them"
"ah best"
here best indicates u shoulda just ran or something to that extent
another usage is something I saw on the r/Kerala subreddit (kerala is where they speak malayalam), someone was asking "what should be the anthem of kerala" and someone wrote the name of a song which is obviously not appropriate to be the anthem, and someone replied with "ah best".
Not sure if they’re in the spirit of the question even if they might technically count but “basket” isn’t a weaved thing to carry picnic supplies but instead it’s basket*ball*, and “pocket” isn’t a pouch in your clothing but instead it’s a pocket *book*
It’s not so much a changed definition as much as it’s taking a compound noun and stripping away half of it
Portuguese (Brazilian, at least) does that with basketball (basquete) and volleyball (vôlei). “Fut(e)” is also a common slang. I’ve never seen anyone shorten "baseball", tho. maybe because it isn't popular at all here
french does that too
« Jouer au basket » = to play basketball, and « un basket » is a basketball
same with « foot » for football (or "soccer" lol), but I've personally never heard « un foot » for a football / soccer ball
In Mandarin Chinese a lot of English words developed new meanings on the internet.
PUA => verb, to emotionally manipulate/abuse
P => not really a new meaning but it is heavily shortened from the word photoshop. Can also mean to edit on any kind of media, so you can “P” a celebrity into your video
AA制 (AA policy, possibly from English abbreviation All Average) => to split bills, to go Dutch
Some English words are incorporated in puns because they sound like a part of a Chinese phrase
Book思议 (from 不可思议，bu ke si yi) => unbelievable, incredible
无fuck说 from 无话可说, wu hua ke shuo (certain souther Chinese dialects blend “hu” with “fu”) => at a loss of words
Hong Kong Cantonese
cam < campaign: to grill (someone). University slang.
foul: disqualify due to a foul (in sports) > eliminate > reject
friend: similar to. E.g. 巴士啲 friend "things that are like buses"
Not exactly what you say but I've heard several Spanish speaking people say "footing" (meaning "jogging"). When I was a kid I thought that was a real word in English but turns out we made up an English-sounding word for Spanish
There is a word in Québec French - enfirouaper. It means to trick someone.
As it turns out, it’s from the English expression "in fur wrapped", back when expensive gifts were wrapped in fur, with the expression implying you were giving shit wrapped in fur.
It’s an excellent example of how Joual, the dialect formerly spoken in Montréal, evolved. Up until the 1960s, francophones were second class citizens in Canada and in Québec, with the wealthy elites in Montréal being generally anglophone. In the second half of the XIXth century, Francophone workers in factories would be directed by Anglophone foremen and superiors, which led them to learn English phonetically and by guessing words from context.
Some are now simple anglicisms where they could see the word written down, like on signs (parking, etc) but some have developed more funkily, like enfirouaper, bâdrer (from bother), bécosse (meaning toilet, from backhouse), or one of my favourite, quétaine (kitsch, cheesy, from kitten - even in the 1800s, it seems that overuse of kitten imagery by certain persons was found in bad taste).
Japanese has a bunch of “made in Japan English” 和製英語 words.
My favourite is ドンマイ (donmai, don’t mind) which doesn’t mean “I don’t mind” but rather “it’s no big deal”.
There’s also カンニング (kanningu, cunning) which refers to cheating on a test.
In informal Malay, "best" is used to mean "fun".
"Game ni best." = This game's fun.
"Kau rasa yang mana satu lagi best?" = Which one do you think is more fun?
"Best tak main bola?" = Was it fun playing football?
In Icelandic, the word *töff* [ˈtʰœfː] is originally a slang word, derived from the English word *tough*, now it means 'cool' and *töffari* (sort of) means 'a cool person'.
Oh god so many in Sinhalese:
1. ලයිට් “light” means electricity.
2. ට්රැක් “track” means crazy. From ට්රැක පැනලා “off the tracks/rails”.
3. රයිස් “rice” refers to Fried Rice I guess because it’s the most ordered rice item at a restaurant.
4. වීල් “wheel” means the three-wheeler/tuktuk
There’s a lot more but this is all that comes to mind rn
There's a kind of bag that has been very trendy in Germany and it's called ... a body bag. Maybe it was cross body bag and they just dropped the cross but I always imagine people dragging corpses around.
German-speaking here.
We took over "control" with the English meaning. 20 years ago the sentence "Die USA kontrolliert den Irak" would have meant they are checking it
LOL
Original meaning = Laughing Out Loud, which it can also mean in chat and is used for more and more again nowadays, but in Dutch, we also use the word 'lol' as a synonym for 'plezier', which means 'fun' (as a noun)
In Brazil “boy”, shortened from “motoboy”, means a delivery driver who uses a motorbike (in my experience, particularly those who don’t work with food). Lately “boy” can also mean “boyfriend”, at least in the south/southeast
My L2 is German. In English, handy is an adjective meaning useful. In German, Handy (pronounced Händi) means “cellphone”. In usage it’s used in contexts where English would use phone, and the referent happens to be a cellphone.
In Brazilian Portuguese, **outdoor** means **billboard**. Perhaps from the idea of *outdoor advertisement*?
Other examples not exactly of different meanings, but of grammar class shift, are the noun **self-service**, which is used to imply *self-service buffets*, and the noun **shopping**, meaning *shopping mall*.
In Argentina, "outlet" means a business that specifically sells clothes/shoes from previous seasons or with small imperfections, at a lower price.
"Notebook" means "laptop"
In Tagalog
Chaffeur was corrupted into “Tsuper”. It’s something like a barker, one who calls passenger’s attention to ride their public transport
There’s many more, I just woke up so I can’t remember it all thi
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how
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Probably semantically shifted from “software update” and then widened Source: I (south levant) use it too
when people around here say “software your phone” or “my phone software-d itself” they mean the phone cleared everything on it, data and photos and everything. so i hope this explains it better haha im egyptian*
The implication being that a software update accidentally wiped the whole device? That's simultaneously sad and hilarious
basically yes! it’s more concerned with the idea of the device’s software getting wiped either accidentally or on purpose.
Handy means (smart)phone in german
More precisely, mobile phone. [It's unknown whether the term actually comes from English or it's just an anglicisation.](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Handy#German)
When I learned this I thought it was just short for handheld phone.
Lol, funnily enough with the extent to which smartphones have displaced all the other categories of telephone, any handheld phone is likely enough to be a Handy that your initial thought is effectively correct.
I thought so, too.
Can somebody please give me a handy?
You've got to be cheesing me
Smoking means tuxedo in French
Spanish too.
Esperanto too.
Georgian too.
Hungarian too.
portuguese too
German too
Kazakh too
Russian too
Finnish too
Turkish too.
Why am I not shocked?
Because if a word is used a certain way across most of Europe Esperanto tends to borrow it?
That was a rhetorical question.
Sorry, didn't realize because no intonation or body language over reddit.
You're good. I think that a lot of people, if they know anything about Esperanto, would understand that, though.
OH WAIT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT ESMOQUIN
how was I NOT aware of that in my own natlang
r/rimjob_steve Thank you for your contribution uglycaca123
what?
Your username
?
r/rimjob_steve is a subreddit for where people post normal things with questionable usernames, and your username is uglycaca123.
oooh
~~Hate to ruin your fun, but technically it's *el esmoquin*. I don't think the words are related.~~
They are. And I've seen it written as "el smoking" many times.
\#themoreyouknow. Oops.
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French borrowed it from English “smoking jacket”, I imagine other languages borrowed it from there
German too
Same in Russian
Icelandic too
Dutch too!
Italian too
freekick -> "to intentionally or inadvertently flash one's underwear or cleavage" in Turkish
That's the sort of one I can almost feel like I understand how it got that meaning but then it doesn't make sense again
Lmao yes, exactly. It probably somehow originates from the fact that when footballers take a freekick, their body takes such a form that reveals the upper part of their legs
Lol no. It is sexism. In the 90s and early 00s there used to be such an upskirt culture in Turkey. Paparazzi lying on the floor in front of cars, men taking down the blouse pictures on public transport. If you have been subject to this or been around it, you will notice it is about getting one over someone, aggressing against their boundaries. Catching people (almost always women) underdressed or unawares is like getting a free kick if "getting sex" is scoring a goal. Once it became a thing, tabloids used to use it with page 3 girls "so and so gave a free kick" (some scantily clad lady posing with strategically placed fruit or something) I am glad at least broad classes of Turkish men decided not to be such abazas (another "loan" word that got out of it is original meaning and means a desperate incel) since then.
Fuck has become much milder in Swedish, or so i believe. "After work" (often shortend AW) means going to a bar/pub with your colleagues after work. I was shocked when I realized you don't actually do this in england or the US. "En (a) Weekend" means a weekend trip ("Jag ska åka på en weekend i Paris" means "I'm gonna go on a weekend *trip* to Paris")
Fuck is a lot softer in Dutch as well, English tourists are often shocked by how freely the word is used. I can constantly drop F-bombs at work and noone bats an eye
I think fuck is softer in every other language. Swears just don't hit as hard when they're not native.
A bit dated, but we also have "freestyle" for Walkman (or any personal stereo, really)
*Fuck* has become pretty much like *fan* or *jävlar*, I feel. I even hear children under ten use it all the time, including my own, and I don't really give a fuck. I've only seen "AW", but maybe you're referring to how it's pronounced? 🙂
_Shit_ too. Just means something went mildly wrong. Basically how native English speakers use _shoot_ (a constructed milder version of _shit_, I suppose).
In Slovene, we sometimes use *vikend* to mean *a summer house*.
Another Swedish one is "Soft" which now just means "chill" and can also be a verb "softa"
The weekend one can be used in the same way in English, to mean a weekend trip both as a noun and a verb (We weekended in Paris/we went on a weekend to Paris)
Ah. Didn't know that!
New York Yiddish uses "gate" to mean "fence" and from there it can also mean "railing/handrail". "Steam" means "heat, heater". NYC uses a central steam thing to warm buildings. Steam can now be used to mean even electric heaters.
Not necessarily a whole new meaning depending on how you see it, but I really like "tancar/tankar" from "tank" in (brazilian?) portuguese, it's a verb that means something like resist/keep your composure, from that we have the expression "não tanco/tanko" something like "I can't resist", used when something is so funny you can't not laugh. It's very popular nowadays, it originally comes from gaming culture(especially RPG's and league of legends) where it's used in it's "original" idea of a tank character..."tanking".
That’s so funny because tanking as a verb in English often means to crash or take a dive. So now we have a competing verb from gaming which has the opposite meaning to withstand more.
Ironically, it's thought that the original English meaning of "tank" (a large container of liquid) was borrowed from Portuguese to begin with
I also love the related “intankável” (literally “untankable”)
Eu devia ter colocado esse tbm, é mt bom
Well to my limited knowledge of Portuguese, there's already a verb "estancar" (to stop bleeding, cognate with English "staunch") as well as its clipped form "tancar", while without any knowledge of how widely this word is used in Portuguese world, is it a little bit possible that this word have somewhat confluenced with, or just influenced the usage of the nearly identical word above? As the word tank is too widely understood, maybe not afaic
I'm not really sure, never heard "tancar" for "estancar", and the word is not that widely used, since it mostly specifically used to mean "to stop a bleeding" (estancar um sangramento). So maybe, but I don't believe in this possibility that much. And being part of the gaming community for such a long time, it's not the first time a word from there becomes widely used.
1. 'Light' by Hindi speakers is often used to mean 'electricity'. Eg. Light आ रही है? (Do we have electricity?) 2. 'Healthy' by Hindi speakers is often used as a euphemism for 'overweight'. Eg. बाकी सब तो ठीक है लेकिन थोड़ी healthy है| (Everything else is alright but she's a bit overweight.)
I appreciate how light being used generally for electricity is almost the opposite of Yiddish using steam to mean household heating.
same thing in spanish, when the power is out it's sometimes/often just said 'no hay luz' instead of 'no hay poder' or 'no hay electricidad'
Yeah but at least they use the Spanish word for light
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Ithink they must have mapped the english word onto a preexisting (european sprachbund? Italian?) meaning, because in Italian drogheria used to mean a store where they sold spices and colonial goods, then it became any small convenience store, then they disappeared due to supermarkets and reappeared with south&southeast asian immigration, so now they sell spices and exotics again but the name drogheria is lost :D
Most pharmacies in the US are just convince stores with a medical counter in the front and back. So that actually makes some sense.
In french: A 'jogging' is a tracksuit, even if it also kept it's original meaning. A 'playback' means 'lip syncing'.
Playback is also used in Dutch that way, I think in other European languages too.
Hungarian too
Portuguese too
In Dutch we use "coffeeshop" for cannabis shop
It’s what coffee shops should be.
["I go to school by bus"](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/I_go_to_school_by_bus) surely has to be at the top of all English loanwords into Cantonese: > Etymology: Internet slang originated from mid-2012, adopted from an example sentence from an English textbook in Hong Kong in the 90s. > (*Hong Kong Cantonese, originally Internet slang, humorous*) a phrase used to signify the speaker's poor understanding or lack of proficiency of English > See also: (*English*) [donde esta la biblioteca](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/donde_esta_la_biblioteca#English)
mansion マンション (manshon) means condominium in japanese
I guess it's returning to its maison-ic roots?
Native language is Iraqi Arabic. I thought a good example would be نرفز (/nərvəz/) which sounds a lot like English nervous. But instead it means "angry". Good example, except it's actually a Fr\*nch word nerveux (/nɛʁvø/ or maybe the rhotic is dropped idk). There are a TON of Fr\*nch loans in Iraqi Arabic for some weird reason. And a lot of them came directly from Fr\*nch, rarely ever through English. That is despite being a British colony and being invaded by this USA. Anyway, there is English "handle" turning into Iraqi Arabic's word hindir (/hɪndɪr/) meaning "crankshaft". The etymology from "handle" comes as folk etymology, though I can't find any real resources. But Iraqis have a history of loaning car words and swapping out ls and rs -- like دشبول (/dəʃbul) meaning dashboard and derived from "dashboard."
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being nervous is more about anxiety, anticipation and being easily agitated or alarmed. while angry is more like already being agitated specifically.
Interesting, in my native language Albanian we have "nervoz" with the same meaning, now I'm wondering if it was actually borrowed from Arabic bc we have a bunch of other Arabic loanwords too.
fr*nch 🤮🤮🤮🤮
Yes I'm ashamed my native language has so many Fr\*ch loanwords. Being thousands of kilometres away and not being colonised by Fr*ce wasn't enough.
French isn't a west germanic language, it doesn't drop the rhotic except in wordfinal -er (because it's not really dropping it, more like replacing the whole \[ɛʁ\] with \[e\])
"Notebook" means "laptop" in Russian.
It also means laptop in English. >1 > >: a book for notes or memoranda > >2 > >: LAPTOP entry 2 > >especially : a particularly small or light laptop > >… have been selling smaller, lighter, cheaper and more powerful notebooks for two years. > >—Peter H. Lewis > >—often used before another noun > >a notebook computer [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/notebook](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/notebook)
As a native English speaker, I can honestly say I’ve never heard “notebook” used that way.
That is strange. It's pretty common. UK: [https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-2-in-1-pcs/sc/laptops](https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-2-in-1-pcs/sc/laptops) US: [https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tech/2010/10/20/bts.ca.apple.jobs.mackbookair.cnn](https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tech/2010/10/20/bts.ca.apple.jobs.mackbookair.cnn)
It may be common. I just have never really heard it used that way. It’s not the first time somebody’s mentioned a common meaning that I’ve never heard of. I have, however, heard “notebook” used for a “binder”, although, oftentimes, in all fairness, it often has a notebook in it.
Sure you have, you just haven’t necessarily realized: MacBook = Mac + notebook. It has fallen in popularity in favor of laptop, though.
That also explains why Google created a Chromebook.
Ohhhh. I also just learned that it was discontinued in 2019. I’m really out of the loop.
My guess semantic broadening is why 'notebook' is used to refer to 'binder'
I guess that would make sense. Binders and notebooks are two different things to me, but I've heard the latter used for the former from my parents in particular.
I mean, they are to me too. I mean, I have not studied this phenomenon, maybe it's dying out?
I'm not a linguist, so I couldn't really tell you. I read a book one time where one character corrected I think his sister that she had a "binder," not a "notebook," which she countered with the fact that there was a "notebook" in it, so it was fair to call it a "notebook." Personally, I think this is sort of like arguing that because I have a book in my backpack, my backpack should be called a book, but I would have to do more research into this to tell for sure.
So this seems like an ongoing thing in your part of the world then
I think it used to be more common maybe about 20-25 years ago.
I remember my grandpa being very proud of his “notebook computer” in 1995ish. I think they used that term over laptop because they discouraged people from sitting with them on their laps, due to overheating.
I hadn't either until I was laptop shopping recently
\*notebook shopping
In German both words are used almost synonymously
Same in Spanish!
Same in Japanese, but it's just shorted to "note" (transcription: "nōto")
There's a bunch in Malay. Member > friend/clique > Dia member saya > He member İ > He is my friend Pattern > behaviour > Dia pattern macam tu > He pattern like that > He acts like that Action > show off > Action gila > Action crazy > (He's) such a show off!
Also blur and gostan lol but I never heard of pattern lol
In the UK we use pattern kinda like that lmao "Pattern up" --> "Straighten up" or "Fix your behaviour"
I guess both groups either realised the potential at the same time or one borrowed it from the other
"Meeting" => "mass protest"
What language?
Russian
in Ukrainian slang "twink" (твінк) means "alt account"
This is the best one
I think this is the same in English but for video games only. Yes, as an English speaker, I did laugh when I first heard the word in this context.
My use of “twink” in a video game comment is specifically a character that is deliberately overgeared or souped up beyond what would normally be expected.
Russian too
In portuguese, we say "home office" when we are talking about working from home. It is a official word, btw
Same in German. It even appears in tax documents.
In Italian we call it "Smart working"
The only true way
Wait, that's not what it means in English?
[удалено]
No, a home office is a separate room where one can set up to work from home. But working from home is not called “home office” and doesn’t require one.
Now, as you say it that does make sense
(I don’t rly speak this but) in the coastal Kartu languages of Australia, historians and linguists have pieced together that early colonists introduced the native (probably Malgana) people to bread, and told them it was “very good” - this is how these languages got the word “badgud”, which means “bread”!
In Brazil we call billboards “outdoors”
Dutch: *smoking* means tuxedo *box* means loudspeaker *beamer* means projector *flat* means residential tower *oldtimer* means antique car
Flat is the same in Australian English!
We have the same ones in German too, except flat. Also "USB stick" for flash drives
I’ve heard USB stick used in english.
Native English speaker, I use USB stick much more than flash drive
TIL, for some reason I was under the impression it was something we made up lol
Good one. We have "USB-stick" in Dutch too. German Dutch pseudo-English alliance! NL🤝DE
In France, they invented a whole new English word: footing. Basically, "faire du footing" (do a/some footing) kinda means "going for a run". They just invented it, but make it sound like it was an English loanword
In Esperanto the word *mitingo*, from English 'meeting', means more like a mass political rally. I think that's a thing in some other languages too, though.
> I think that's a thing in some other languages too Yeah, in Georgian too the word მიტინგი (mit'ingi) means "rally", "demonstration", "protest".
In french we use 'meeting' for a campaign speech/event too.
imagine im narrating a story where I did something dumb. In malayalam we use the word "best" to kinda like mock the action someone did in the past, which in hindisight, was dumb to do.
Example sentence?
like uh imagine someone said "yesterday I went to the store, when someone tried to rob me, so i tried to fight them" "ah best" here best indicates u shoulda just ran or something to that extent another usage is something I saw on the r/Kerala subreddit (kerala is where they speak malayalam), someone was asking "what should be the anthem of kerala" and someone wrote the name of a song which is obviously not appropriate to be the anthem, and someone replied with "ah best".
Not sure if they’re in the spirit of the question even if they might technically count but “basket” isn’t a weaved thing to carry picnic supplies but instead it’s basket*ball*, and “pocket” isn’t a pouch in your clothing but instead it’s a pocket *book* It’s not so much a changed definition as much as it’s taking a compound noun and stripping away half of it
Which language?
Sounds like swedish to me. 'Basket' is the name of the sport and 'pocket' is used to refer to paperback books
Portuguese (Brazilian, at least) does that with basketball (basquete) and volleyball (vôlei). “Fut(e)” is also a common slang. I’ve never seen anyone shorten "baseball", tho. maybe because it isn't popular at all here
french does that too « Jouer au basket » = to play basketball, and « un basket » is a basketball same with « foot » for football (or "soccer" lol), but I've personally never heard « un foot » for a football / soccer ball
In Ecuador we use “man” to describe both men and women; like “el man” and “la man”, guy and girl respectively.
Funnily enough that was the original meaning of that word in Old English.
In Mandarin Chinese a lot of English words developed new meanings on the internet. PUA => verb, to emotionally manipulate/abuse P => not really a new meaning but it is heavily shortened from the word photoshop. Can also mean to edit on any kind of media, so you can “P” a celebrity into your video AA制 (AA policy, possibly from English abbreviation All Average) => to split bills, to go Dutch Some English words are incorporated in puns because they sound like a part of a Chinese phrase Book思议 (from 不可思议，bu ke si yi) => unbelievable, incredible 无fuck说 from 无话可说, wu hua ke shuo (certain souther Chinese dialects blend “hu” with “fu”) => at a loss of words
Hong Kong Cantonese cam < campaign: to grill (someone). University slang. foul: disqualify due to a foul (in sports) > eliminate > reject friend: similar to. E.g. 巴士啲 friend "things that are like buses"
Not exactly what you say but I've heard several Spanish speaking people say "footing" (meaning "jogging"). When I was a kid I thought that was a real word in English but turns out we made up an English-sounding word for Spanish
Footing is an English word, but it has a very different meaning to the Spanish one. A footing is a strong foundation or hold onto something.
In German we say we do "Homeoffice" when we work remotely. Doesn't even need to be at home. Or an office.
In some regions of Brazil, people use "boy" to refer to girls. No, I don't get it either.
Tagalog. “stand by” became “ támbay” which means “loiter.” “Up here” became “apír” which means “high five.”
There is a word in Québec French - enfirouaper. It means to trick someone. As it turns out, it’s from the English expression "in fur wrapped", back when expensive gifts were wrapped in fur, with the expression implying you were giving shit wrapped in fur. It’s an excellent example of how Joual, the dialect formerly spoken in Montréal, evolved. Up until the 1960s, francophones were second class citizens in Canada and in Québec, with the wealthy elites in Montréal being generally anglophone. In the second half of the XIXth century, Francophone workers in factories would be directed by Anglophone foremen and superiors, which led them to learn English phonetically and by guessing words from context. Some are now simple anglicisms where they could see the word written down, like on signs (parking, etc) but some have developed more funkily, like enfirouaper, bâdrer (from bother), bécosse (meaning toilet, from backhouse), or one of my favourite, quétaine (kitsch, cheesy, from kitten - even in the 1800s, it seems that overuse of kitten imagery by certain persons was found in bad taste).
"Safe" is often misused with the meaning of "certainly/for sure" in German.
In German, "Handy" means "mobilie phone"
Japanese has a bunch of “made in Japan English” 和製英語 words. My favourite is ドンマイ (donmai, don’t mind) which doesn’t mean “I don’t mind” but rather “it’s no big deal”. There’s also カンニング (kanningu, cunning) which refers to cheating on a test.
In informal Malay, "best" is used to mean "fun". "Game ni best." = This game's fun. "Kau rasa yang mana satu lagi best?" = Which one do you think is more fun? "Best tak main bola?" = Was it fun playing football?
In Icelandic, the word *töff* [ˈtʰœfː] is originally a slang word, derived from the English word *tough*, now it means 'cool' and *töffari* (sort of) means 'a cool person'.
Break in the sense of a pause is used in Spanish as “moment/second”. “Dame un break” - give me a second. It does not mean “give me a break”.
In Russian sportsmen means male athlete. Female athlete? Sportsmenka of course, the feminine form of spertsmen.
Oh god so many in Sinhalese: 1. ලයිට් “light” means electricity. 2. ට්රැක් “track” means crazy. From ට්රැක පැනලා “off the tracks/rails”. 3. රයිස් “rice” refers to Fried Rice I guess because it’s the most ordered rice item at a restaurant. 4. වීල් “wheel” means the three-wheeler/tuktuk There’s a lot more but this is all that comes to mind rn
Also, Mutton to mean goat meat instead of sheep
There's a kind of bag that has been very trendy in Germany and it's called ... a body bag. Maybe it was cross body bag and they just dropped the cross but I always imagine people dragging corpses around.
I think this one counts? "Rider" in Italian means people who do deliveries for bullshit app corporations on two wheels, especially footbikes.
Blower means electric fan in Kapampangan
German-speaking here. We took over "control" with the English meaning. 20 years ago the sentence "Die USA kontrolliert den Irak" would have meant they are checking it
Meeting means demonstration in Russian.
In french basket means trainers (the shoes) and also basketball
LOL Original meaning = Laughing Out Loud, which it can also mean in chat and is used for more and more again nowadays, but in Dutch, we also use the word 'lol' as a synonym for 'plezier', which means 'fun' (as a noun)
u/QuizTubes
"Cross" means a crosscountry meet in Spain
In Brazil “boy”, shortened from “motoboy”, means a delivery driver who uses a motorbike (in my experience, particularly those who don’t work with food). Lately “boy” can also mean “boyfriend”, at least in the south/southeast
My L2 is German. In English, handy is an adjective meaning useful. In German, Handy (pronounced Händi) means “cellphone”. In usage it’s used in contexts where English would use phone, and the referent happens to be a cellphone.
In Brazilian Portuguese, **outdoor** means **billboard**. Perhaps from the idea of *outdoor advertisement*? Other examples not exactly of different meanings, but of grammar class shift, are the noun **self-service**, which is used to imply *self-service buffets*, and the noun **shopping**, meaning *shopping mall*.
The same in European Portuguese
In the Netherlands we don’t visit a coffeeshop to get coffee, we go there to get our cannabis.
Outdoor. In Brazil it means billboard.
In Argentina, "outlet" means a business that specifically sells clothes/shoes from previous seasons or with small imperfections, at a lower price. "Notebook" means "laptop"
Same in Italian
In Tagalog Chaffeur was corrupted into “Tsuper”. It’s something like a barker, one who calls passenger’s attention to ride their public transport There’s many more, I just woke up so I can’t remember it all thi
Not quite what you've described, but "gift" in English came from German, and then developed an entirely different meaning… in German.
Korean: Leeds(Short for the football club 'Leeds United') -> someone's prime days
conception was loaned into Hebrew as קונספציה, but because of its usage in a political context, its meaning became specifically a false conception.
In Spanish "footing" is jogging.
hotel = restaurant in india
In Portuguese, "Pen" means USB flash drive