In Competition No. 2420 you were invited to invent words describing something familiar which fill a need in the English language.
The germ of this competition was a book called The Meaning of Tingo which assembles ‘extraordinary words from around the world’, from which I learnt that the Japanese have a single word to describe ‘a woman who appears pretty when seen from behind but not from the front’ and another very useful one which means ‘to try out a new sword on a passer-by’.
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