Word
Where does Toboggan (the word) come from?
Not Alpine at all: toboggan reached English in 1829 through Canadian French tabagane, from an Algonquian word for a sled, such as Mi'kmaq topaghan. These flat wooden sleds hauled loads across the snow.
More Words
Word
Bungalow (the word)
📍 Bengal (India & Bangladesh)
Bungalow comes from Hindi bangla, 'Bengali', short for a low, thatched 'house in the Bengal style'. English speakers in India were using it by the 1670s.
Word
Tycoon (the word)
📍 Tokyo (Edo), Japan
Tycoon is Japanese taikun, 'great lord', a title foreigners used for Japan's shogun in the 1850s. Lincoln's secretary called him 'the Tycoon' in 1861; the business-mogul sense came after WWI.
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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.
More from North America
Nature
Monterey pine
📍 Central coast of California, USA
Monterey pine grows wild only along a short stretch of California's central coast and on two Mexican islands. Yet it makes up about 90% of New Zealand's plantation forests.
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Game
Softball
📍 Chicago, USA
Softball began on Thanksgiving Day 1887 at Chicago's Farragut Boat Club, when a rolled-up boxing glove became the ball and a broom handle the bat.
Nature
Dahlia
📍 Central Mexico highlands
Almost every wild dahlia species grows only in Mexico, the genus's home and centre of diversity. Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles named the flower in 1791 after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl.