Alliteration

You will probably already know this one, but hey – it’s a lot of fun to write about! You may also have thought that alliteration was as simple as “why wouldn’t we want wool” – the repetition of the initial letter of every word in a given sequence – but this is quite far from [...]

Zugzwang

A really splendid word to say. Coming from German, zugzwang (pronounced as you’d imagine it to be) means ‘compulsion to move’. It’s formed by the words zug (move) and zwang (compulsion or obligation). The Germans really do have a lot of words with Z in – playing Scrabble there must be really easy. Assuming you [...]

Schadenfreude

This is when pleasure is derived from someone else’s misfortune. It’s German in origin (bet you didn’t guess that) and comes from the two words Schaden (harm) and Freude (joy). There is no comparable word in English – I guess we’re all just too nice – so we borrowed it “as is” from German.

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