Letter For Letter Trivia Quiz

An easy mistake to make. In Polish "pasta" is shorthand for "pasta do zębów", or toothpaste. The polish word for pasta is makaron.

The English word pasta is borrowed straight from Italian, which in turn derives from the Latin for dough or pastry.

Glass is the Swedish word for ice cream, which comes to the language from the French "glace". This derives from the proto-Indo-European modifier "gel" meaning "cold".

The Swedish word for "glass" is the very similar "glas". Both English and Swedish words are probably derived from the proto-Germanic word for "to shine".

The English word trombone is another that comes directly from Italian. It's meaning is simply "large trumpet". As the customer complaint alludes to, in French the word has two meanings. One is the same as English and Italian but the other is "paper clip". The reason is straightforward - a paper clip looks like a mini trombone.

This one would be awkward if you got it wrong. "Gift" is a German word for poison. "Geschenk" would be the correct word for a present.

The English word "gift" derives from the Old English for "giving" or "dowry". The German word is what's known as a semantic loan, where a word already exists in a language but is given a new meaning borrowed from another language. In this case, the word did originally mean "gift" in the English sense but was given the meaning of poison from the Greek word "dosis" meaning "dose".

"Tuna" is a Spanish word for a range of spiky cacti such as the prickly pear. If you re-arrange the letters and add an accent then you get the Spanish word for the fish, "atún". In fact it is from "atún" that the English name for the fish came into existence (so it was the English doing the letter re-arranging).

The Spanish word for the cactus comes from the extinct Taino language once spoken in the Lesser Antilles.

"Farmer" is a Hungarian word with multiple meanings. It can mean "denim", or "made of denim" or "[a pair of] blue jeans". It can also just mean "farmer". Context is key to working out which is being talked about.

Both English and Hungarian versions of the word for one who works the land derive from the French "fermier". The etymology of the Hungarian word for denim is uncertain but is likely to be because it was a material worn by farmworkers.

"Helmet" is the plural of "helmi" which means pearl in Finnish. The word "helmet" also means a necklace made of pearls. The Finnish word for "helmet" as the English would understand it, is "kypärä".

In medieval times, the French called a particular kind of helmet that covers the face, a "heaumet" and that is where the English word comes from. Previously, Old English called it a "helm" but "helmet" has replaced it as the generic word for any form of protective head covering.

The etymology of the Finnish "helmi" is unknown.

"Pies" is the Polish word for "dog". Though its etymology is not known for certain it may come from the old Slavic word for "to [make a] mark". This meaning when applied to animals became "spotted" and transferred from the adjective to the noun to become the word for "dog".

A "pie" in Polish would be "sroka". The English word comes from the Old English for "pastry".

"Baskets" are a slang term in French for what the English call "trainers" and Americans call "sneakers". The word comes from what the French colloquially called basketball shoes and had become the generic term for all kinds of sneakers over time.

The French word for a basket is a "panier".

"Pane" is the Italian word for bread. A pane of glass in Italian would be "vetro". Different translations of bread across multiple languages provide a variety of false friends for English words; "pan" in Spanish; "pain" in French; "brood" in Dutch.

You will not be surprised to learn, given the similarity of the words in French, Italian and Spanish that its derivation is from the Latin word for bread, "panem".