EnglishTok.com

I confess to a fondness for Yiddish words that confounds me. Any chance I get, I try to slip a Yiddish word into my sentence. Here are some of my favorite Yiddish words: * Kvetch: to complain, whine Example: Gopal is forever kvetching about his kids playing loud rap music. * Chutzpah:

Who hasn’t heard of FOMO? The acronym, which stands for Fear of Missing Out, has been popular on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for over a decade now. But FOMO is so yesterday. Our current AI era has generated immense FOBO in millions of workers! FOBO?

English is the greatest kleptomaniacal language. No corner of the world has been spared from the grasping hand of English. To get a sense of some foreign words that have crept into English, I recently purchased a dictionary of foreign words for $5 on an auction site: From Bonbon to

The beauty of English is that neologisms aka newly created words are cropping up all the time in all corners of the world. Just this morning, I found an article in the New York Times with the headline “Mamdani, Leaning Into ‘Sewer Socialism,’ Gets His Hands Dirty.” Wow! I was

What do we mean when we say English is the big daddy of languages? We often see references to big daddy in the U.S. media. Big daddy means a preeminent person by reason of seniority, power or size. For example, a journalist may write: Muhammad Ali was the big

A Certain "Je Ne Sais Quoi" - The Origin of Foreign Words in English by Chloe Rhodes I’ve been known to insist that the best way to boost one’s vocabulary is by wide reading. But for someone who forswears vocabulary books, I can often be found

A friend once burst out in a moment of anguish, “English is a horribly confusing language.” Truer words have never been spoken. There are so many words and expressions in English that trip us up. Take for instance, sometimes, sometime and some time. They sound so similar but their meanings

Euphemisms are social lubricants. Euphemisms camouflage the unspeakable into expressions that do not cause offense to others. That’s the reason we hesitate to describe someone as “disabled” anymore. Instead, we now call the person “differently abled.” Euphemisms are the price we pay to live in civilized society. For some

Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words: A Miscellany of Obscure Terms, Bizarre Phrases, Surprising Etymologies (2023) by Erin McCarthy & the team at Mental Floss Let me explain word lovers for just a second. They’re a strange breed. Word lovers will use quakebuttock when coward would suffice. Instead of slamming

The answer to the above question is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” (Thank You, Churchill). There are at least 100 varieties of English spoken around the word. Maybe, more. They include: * Indian English * Jamaican English * Nigerian English * Singlish aka Singapore English * American English * Trinidadian English * Australian

Ever since Love in Tokyo (Hindi), Aman (Hindi) and Ulagam Sutrum Valiban (Tamil) debuted in the 1960s and 1970s, Indians have been enamored with Japan. Most Indian baby-boomers are likely aware of the Japanese word sayonara. After all, the word features in the famous song from Love in Tokyo (Joy

Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms (2022) by Anatoly Liberman A lot of us use idioms every day, in speech and writing, without grasping what exactly an idiom means. An idiom is a group of words that has a figurative meaning (apart from the literal meaning

The Dismantling of India: In 35 Portraits (2022) by TJS George The recently departed TJS George (1927-2025) was a respected Indian journalist, striding tall in a profession with few genuine stars. Quietly and with no drama, George built a sterling reputation with quality work spread over several decades. Yet after

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (2008) by Ammon Shea We must be grateful Ammon Shea has restricted his crazy antics to reading the Oxford English Dictionary. What if he'd decided to take a hammer and swing it at every third person he encountered

Hell, No! iPhone, iPad, iMac and MacBook, yes! They come sailing across the high seas on massive container ships from China. Au contraire, English was not made in China! But we owe so many popular English words and expressions to the Chinese. Let’s start with an interesting expression that’

Beautiful Words: A Celebration for Word Lovers (2023) by Cider Mill Press When a word power book includes words like breakfast, listen, October, newspaper and library I quickly fling it where it belongs: the trashcan. After browsing through the book for about 30-minutes, I wondered if Beautiful Words: A Celebration

Et Cetera: An Illustrated Guide to Latin Phrases (2024) by Maia Lee-Chin To speak and write good English is a nice skill to possess. But to be able to sprinkle Latin into your conversation, a college admission essay or a speech you’re asked to write for your boss is

Grandiloquent Words: A Pictoric Lexicon of Ostrobogulous Locutions (2023) by Jason Travis Ott My antenna is always up for new word power books in English. You could even say I scent ‘em before I see ‘em. They’re like our fabulous Indian curries. You smell the masala before you reach

Pig Butchering was not to be found in either the Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary when I looked for the term in early March 2026. But the expression is popular in the United States. Dozens of media reports on online scams, including in NYT, Wall Street

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013) by Mason Currey Is there some peculiar madness to the method of great writers, I had always wondered. As if in response to my ceaseless prayers for clues to achieving fame and fortune via the pen, Mason Currey has put out Daily Rituals: How

A Wonderland of Words: Around the Word in 101 Essays (2024) by Shashi Tharoor Most Indian readers are familiar with Shashi Tharoor, the diplomat, writer and politician. For those not familiar with the man, Shashi Tharoor is the rare Indian politician who can articulate his thoughts in English without sounding