Sheila Charles WORDS WORDS WORDS
I like to think I am reasonably bright
But every now and then
Something pops up to challenge me.
Last week it happened again.
I help an Asian student speak English.
Now I am sure you would suppose,
As it is their SECOND language,
I’d better than them at prose.
So when she showed me her essay,
I read it with interest, yes.
But there was this word I had never heard of.
The word was Chariness.
Had she misspelt it, I wondered.
She assured me it was right
As she’d got it from the internet.
She was adamant, while still being polite.
I told her I knew hundreds of words
But I’d never heard that one at all.
I consulted the OXford dictionary – not there.
This was driving me up the wall.
Then she showed it me on her iPhone.
There it was as plain as day –
From Webster’s. I said, “That’s American.
If you lived THERE, that would be okay.
But no-one will have heard of it here.”
(It means cautiousness – so it said.)
Well, I HAD heard the word chary
But even that would is not widespread!
So Webster’s had put me in my place
Making me feel like a dunderhead.
illustration by ume-nori
