Nuts and Bolts: Gifts from Amazon.

What do all these things have in common?


photo by Sfoskett



photo by brian.gratwicke





photo by Elena Chochkova



Photo by കാക്കര


photo by DickDaniels 

and last, but by no means least:



(They're a Jaguar car, an agouti, a cashew fruit, petunias, tapioca roots, a chestnut-fronted macaw, and a Brazilian tapir in case you didn't recognise them).

Does that help?

To which list I could add cayenne pepper, a cougar, and a toucan.

No?

Well, all these words (and more) have come to us from the Tupi-Gurani group of South American languages.

And I, for one, am grateful.

Word To Use Today: one from a Tupi-Gurani language. Tupi-Gurani words tend to come to English through Portuguese, and/or French. Agouti comes from akuti, cashew from acaîu, cayenne from kyinha, macaw from macavuana (which may be the name of a type of palm tree, the fruit of which macaws eat) petunia from petun, which means smoke, jaguar from jaguara, tapioca from a word meaning 'juice squeezed out', toucan from tucano, and the beautiful tapir from tapiira.

PS Another reason to celebrate: it's World Tapir Day today!