Monday, December 27, 2010

Oops I Did It Again

The first noted use of this word was by Horace Walpole. In a letter to Mann (dated January 28th) he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of". The name is said to stem from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa which literally translates to "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island.The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages.

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