Word
Where does Jeans (the word) come from?
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 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.
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Word
Boondocks (the word)
📍 Southern Luzon, Philippines
This all-American slang for the middle of nowhere is Tagalog: US soldiers in the Philippines in the early 20th century picked up bundok, 'mountain', and brought it home as 'the boondocks'.
Word
Hurricane (the word)
📍 Caribbean (Taíno)
'Hurricane' is a Caribbean word: Spanish explorers borrowed huracán from the Taíno, an Arawakan-speaking people of the West Indies, and English took it from Spanish in the 1550s.
More from Europe
Game
Squash
📍 Harrow (London), England
Squash began around 1830 at Harrow School in London, when pupils noticed that a punctured ball, which “squashed” against the wall, made the old game of rackets far more varied.
Game
Pétanque
📍 La Ciotat, France
Pétanque was born in La Ciotat, near Marseille, around 1907–1910, when rheumatic player Jules Lenoir could no longer run before throwing. Its name comes from Provençal for “feet planted”.
Invention
Kaleidoscope
📍 Edinburgh, Scotland
Scottish physicist David Brewster discovered the effect while experimenting with light around 1815 and patented the toy in 1817, naming it from Greek words for 'beautiful form' and 'to look'.