English Vocabulary in Use: Advanced Book with Answers and Enhanced eBook Vocabulary Reference and Practice 3rd Edition

tabby
German
gimmick
an amusing or unusual way of attracting attention
advertising 
gimmicks
Greek
tonic
medicine to make you feel stronger and better
take a 
tonic
Hindi
cot
child’s bed with high vertical sides
sleep in a 
cot
Icelandic
mumps
a childhood illness
have 
mumps
Japanese
karaoke
type of entertainment where ordinary people sing 
to popular music
a 
karaoke machine
Portuguese
palaver
unnecessary trouble
What a 
palaver!
Russian
intelligentsia
social class of intellectuals
19th-century 
intelligentsia
Spanish
hammock
net hung and used as a bed
sleep in a 
hammock
Turkish
turban
type of men’s headwear, made from a long piece 
of cloth
wear a 
turban
False friends
Some English words may look like words in your language but have a diff erent meaning. Such words 
are known as 
false friends, e.g. the German word 
Gift 
looks like the English word 
gift  
[present]
but 
actually means 
poison
in German. The English word 
sympathetic resembles a word meaning, simply, 
nice
in many other European languages, but in English 
sympathetic has a much narrower meaning 
[understanding and caring about someone else’s suff ering]
. Note also that the pronunciation of a word 
borrowed into English may be quite diff erent from its pronunciation in its language of origin.
A
B
C
Some languages do not easily accept words from other languages into their lexicon
1
, but 
English has always welcomed them. It is estimated that English vocabulary has its sources
2
in at least 120 languages. Some languages have, of course, provided English with more 
words than others. English started out with a basic Anglo-Saxon
3