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What is a 'claddagh'?
A claddagh (pronounced 'klada') is a 300-year-old Irish wedding ring.
Its features are clasped hands symbolizing friendship, a heart (love) and
a crown (loyalty). Legend has it that it originated in Claddagh on Galway
Bay in 1690 when it was first made by an Irishman, who learned the trade
of a goldsmith while under arrest somewhere in the Near East.
Today the ring has become Ireland's biggest export product since Guinness.
It can be bought throughout Great Britain for c. 50 pounds. |
....'honesty boxes' ?
It is a box at public locations like airports or stations where people
are asked to deposit their money in exchange of a newspaper which is placed
(unsupervised) on a rack next to the box. The experiment was started last
month (March) by W.H.Smith, the newsagent, at Heathrow Airport and has
been so successful since that Smith has extended it to 30 locations throughout
England. Similar honesty boxes are quite common in the USA. |
...'gerrymandering'
?
...is the manipulation
of constituency boundaries in order to give unfair advantages to one party
in an election. This used to be common practice in Northern Ireland where
the Ulster Unionists tried to gain advantages in predominantly Catholic
areas. |
...'supergrass'
?
... a criminal who
informs the police about the activities of a large number of other criminals.This
occurred in Northern Ireland with IRA-informants. |
...'safe
houses' ?
... hiding places
(usu. private) of IRA- or other paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. |
...'home
rule / direct rule' ?
...home rule: if
Northern Ireland had its own government
...direct rule:
Northern Ireland is governed by the Houses of Parliament in London (current
situation) |
...a 'private'
public school ?
...this is only
possible in England, because public schools like Eton or Harrow are in
fact private schools, which means independent schools (independent from
state control). As early as the 15th century lay townspeople formed guilds
to provide schools for the poor and called them 'public' schools.One of
the many patrons was Henry VI, who founded Eton in 1440 as a public school
so that tutors could be hired to teach children in groups rather than the
costly individual tutor privately at home.
On the advent of
state-funded secondary schools after 1902, the ancient public schools retained
their original title since parents were still required to pay a fee. |
| New
words do not only come up in computer terminology, but also in many
other walks of life: |
nerd:
in the 80s it was an American term of abuse for an ineffectual individual,
but it is today applied to people with an obsessive interest in computing. |
spamming:
flooding the Internet with junk e-mails |
| information
fatigue syndrome: signs of being overfed with information. It is a
feeling as if one is trying to climb a ladder under the Niagara Falls. |
oldies
/ wrinklies / super-wrinklies: in an ageing population the number of
older people is rising. |
superpredators:
a term coined by criminologists to describe children who commit a huge
number of crimes. |
| mini:
is now a megafavourite not only used to describe short skirts or small
cars, but also used in words like mini-boom, mini-crash, mini-conglomerate,
mini-recovery or mini-recession (words from the financial pages). Diminutives
like -ling, -ette, or -let are outmoded by -mini. |
chib
= club or knife
hood= neighbourhood
dis = disrespect
These words originate
from a new dialect which is spoken by British youngsters involved in street
violence. |
feel
froggy = want to fight
yo = hi
Two words from a
new dialect, called Ebonics, used by balck people in America. |
One of the best and least expensive German-English / English-German dictionaries is:
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