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Word
Where does Durian (the word) come from?
Durian comes from Malay duri, 'thorn', after the fruit's spiky husk. Called the 'king of fruits' in some regions, it smells so strong that Singapore bans it on its metro trains.
More Words
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Word
Safari (the word)
📍 Swahili coast, East Africa
Safari is Swahili for 'journey', used for any trip, even a bus ride, and comes from Arabic safar. Explorer Richard Burton brought it into English in the late 1850s.
Word
Anorak (the word)
📍 Greenland
Anorak comes from Greenlandic anoraq, a hooded, waterproof jacket. English adopted it in 1924, and by the 1980s British slang also used it for a socially awkward nerd.
Word
Jeans (the word)
📍 Genoa, Italy
Jeans goes back to Genoa (Gênes in French): English merchants called a hard-wearing fustian cloth from the Italian port 'Gene fustian', later just 'jean', and were importing it in bulk by the 1500s.
More from Asia
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Invention
Chopsticks
📍 Ancient China (Yellow River plain)
Chopsticks come from ancient China, where they were first used mostly for cooking and for picking bits out of stews. Six bronze chopsticks about 3,200 years old were found in the Shang ruins near Anyang.
Invention
Bullet train (high-speed railway)
📍 Tokyo–Osaka, Japan
The world's first high-speed railway, Japan's Tōkaidō Shinkansen, opened on 1 October 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka, just before the Tokyo Olympics. Its round-nosed trains reached 210 km/h and cut the trip to four hours.
Game
Dragon dance
📍 China
The dragon dance goes back more than 2,000 years to Han-dynasty China, when people danced like dragons to call for rain. Today a team lifts the long dragon on poles, and parade dragons can be up to 100 metres long.