.jpeg/960px-Jeans_Detail_(184193271).jpeg)
Word
Where does Denim (the word) come from?
Your jeans are part French: 'denim' is short for serge de Nîmes, 'serge from Nîmes', a city in southern France. English had the word by the 1690s, and American mills were weaving cotton denim by 1789.
More Words
.jpg/330px-%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BE%2C_%D0%9A%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_(Unsplash).jpg)
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.
.jpg/330px-Art-broken-explosion-glass_(24300206666).jpg)
Word
Smithereens (the word)
📍 Ireland
Smithereens comes from Irish smidirín, 'a tiny fragment', from smiodar, 'fragment', plus the Irish diminutive -ín, the same ending as in colleen. It turns up in English in the early 1800s.
.jpg/330px-Macropus_giganteus_1_(49535146378).jpg)
Word
Kangaroo (the word)
📍 Cooktown, Queensland, Australia
Joseph Banks wrote down 'kanguru' in 1770 at today's Cooktown, where Cook's ship was being repaired, from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru. The tale that it means 'I don't know' is a myth.
More from Europe
.jpg/330px-%22Ewe_lookin_at_me_kid........%22%3F_(51396500853).jpg)
Nature
Merino sheep
📍 Iberian Peninsula
Merino sheep were developed in medieval Spain, which guarded the fine-wool breed as a monopoly: smuggling one out could mean death. Merinos only reached Australia in 1797, via South Africa.
Nature
Horse chestnut (conker tree)
📍 Mountains of northern Greece & Albania
The conker tree of British playgrounds is a Balkan native: wild horse chestnuts survive only in a few mountain forests of northern Greece, Albania and nearby. Everywhere else, it was planted.
.jpg/330px-Spray_Paint_Cans_Berlin_(Unsplash).jpg)
Invention
Aerosol spray can
📍 Oslo, Norway
Norwegian chemical engineer Erik Rotheim of Oslo applied for the first aerosol spray can patent in 1926. Americans later made spray cans famous with WWII 'bug bombs' that sprayed insecticide against malaria mosquitoes.