- S -

Safari
Not surprisingly, this is an African loanword. It comes from Swahili. In Swahili, it just means ‘journey', not being restricted to excursions where you go and see wildlife. It may be difficult for us to imagine someone referring to a trip from London to Bristol or from Cologne to Brussels as a safari, but that is how it is used in Swahili.

Sandwich
A wonderful word to illustrate German speakers' difficulties pronouncing English. What makes it more difficult is that speakers think it can't be difficult. After all, it is the same in German, isn't it? No. It isn't. There are at least three differences: the /w/ is often realised as /v/ by German speakers, but this admittedly is rather the stereotypical Kraut of English comedies. But that leaves another two problems. The vowel /æ/, which has no counterpart in German, is often realised as /e/ by German speakers. This can also be observed in a recent advertisement in Germany for American pancakes, which rather sound like pencakes. But to return to the sandwich. The next problem is that /d/, as is the case in German, is devoiced at the end of the syllable and becomes /t/. So in the worst case scenario, sandwich would sound like sentvich. But let us assume an advanced learner has overcome all these difficulties. It may still not sound very English. First, there is usually elision of /d/ in sandwich in English; it is not pronounced at all. And if it is, it becomes, oddly, aligned more to the second than to the first syllable, giving something like san - dwich. Similarly, pick-up. The phonological boundary line is not the same as the morphological boundary line, but /k/ is aligned to the second syllable, so that it sounds like cup rather than up.

See-saw
The two /s/-sounds in see-saw usually have quite different lip shapes. You can easily observe this in a mirror. In the first, the lips are spread, in the second, the lips are rounded, just as they are in the following vowels. This is an example of assimilation, the change of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring sound (cf. Roach 2001: 56).

Sensuous
The word sensuous was actually invented by Milton, because he was not happy with sensual. Originally, sensual was a neutral word which meant ‘referring to the senses', but it had become pejorative and meant something like ‘lustful'. In spite of Milton, today sensuous and sensual are often confused and used as synonyms, usually in the ‘bad' sense. It looks as if people were more interested in this kind of thing. Poor Milton would have to invent yet another new word. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 176-7)

Sex and crime
“I can't even imagine that there are any Latin words in English at all”, a student, visibly flabbergasted, once exclaimed in class when we were discussing foreign loanwords. Probably the student was looking for a word which looked and sounded Latin, something like ancilla or ubi or adque. The problem is that foreign loans have a way of hiding their identity and are not so easily recognisable as foreigners. Not many people, when talking about sex and crime, probably realise they are using loanwords. Both of them are Latin in origin. And as for the real Latin words quoted at the beginning, ancilla has given rise to English ancillary, and ubi to ubiquitous.

She won't go out with anyone
This sentence can have two clearly different meanings. Either she will go out with no one, or she is very careful who she goes out with, she does not go out with anyone who just happens to come her way. The difference is mainly conveyed through intonation, with a falling pitch movement on anyone in the first case, and a falling-rising pitch movement in the second case. (Roach 2001: 33-4)

Shirt and skirt
In may cases, it is difficult to say if a word was introduced by the Anglo-Saxons or the Scandinavians. After all, both spoke Germanic languages. A good hint is the occurrence of /sk/ in a word. In Old English, /sk/ had changed into /S/, but in the Scandinavian languages this change had not taken place. Thus words such as sky, skin, scrape, bask and skirt are of Scandinavian origin, whereas ship, shall, fish and shirt had entered English earlier. (Jucker 2000: 24)

Shrove Tuesday
Shrove Tuesday is the name for the last day of the Carnival Season, the last day before Lent. Shrove is the Past Tense form of the verb shrive, which means ‘hear confession'. In the olden days, people first used to go to confess their sins and then made merry with sports and feasting – and sin again? The corresponding noun is shrift, and if you are given short shrift, you are immediately told that you are wrong and that you are not given any sympathy or attention: “McLaren hot short shrift from all the record companies when he presented his new band to them”. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 169)

Shuttle
This is a well-known word. Most people would think of space-shuttle or a bus-shuttle nowadays, but the original meaning was quite different. It was an instrument used in weaving (German Schiffchen), and as such it often occurs in fairy tales, e.g. in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The spindle, the needle and the shuttle”. It is interesting to notice that today when weaving is no longer of importance in everyday life, this meaning, the original one, has been relegated to third place in the dictionary, being preceded by "space shuttle" and "bus shuttle". The common idea which connects the three meanings is, of course, something moving up and down quickly and regularly.

Sideburns
What connection can there possibly be between an American general of Civil War times and the English language? Well, the general's claim to fame lies mainly in his beard, to be precise in his whiskers. He sported thick side-whiskers which connected with his moustache, leaving his chin clean at the same time. This style strangely became all the rage in America and elsewhere. The general's name was Burnsides, and burnsides was the name originally given to this style. Then, because the hair was on the side of the face, people were not happy with the word any more and changed it into sideburns – its modern form. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 251-2)

Silly
The word, although this may come as a surprise, is related to German selig. In Old English, it meant ‘happy' or ‘pious', in Middle English ‘innocent' or ‘harmless'. It was often used to express compassion for people suffering undeservedly, and then in general to those who deserve sympathy. Thus is came to mean ‘foolish' or ‘stupid'. This is an example of a word whose meaning has degenerated. (Jucker 2000: 120)

Skyscraper
The word was around before tall buildings appeared on the scene, and it was used to refer to a tall sail, a tall person, a tall horse and a hat with a high crown! (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 264-5)

Sleepless nights
We usually associate rhetorical figures with literature. This makes us underestimate how much rhetorical figures are also a part of everyday language. Hardly anyone notices that there is something rhetorically noticeable in phrases such as "a happy day" or "sleepless nights". Yet this is a clear shift from the “normal” order of things: it is not the nights which are sleepless but the people who cannot find sleep. This kind of “wrong” reference is known as hypallage in rhetorics and is often found in Shakespeare, for example. A literary example is this from T.S Eliot's The Waste Land: “Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow.” It is not the snow, of course, which is forgetful, but the snow covers the earth and makes us forget temporarily what the earth is like.

Snuck
Traditionally, sneaked has been the Past Tense form of sneak. But English speakers increasingly say and write snuck. Languages change, and what is right for one generation may be wrong for the next generation. (Finegan 52008: 26)

Some
Anyone who says "I have picked some flowers" will be understood to have picked two flowers at least. They could have been flowers of two different kinds, say gladioli and dahlias, these plus some lilies etc. Alternatively, they could also have been all of the same kind, all lilies, all dahlias, etc. This difference is clear and objective. And yet some flowers would be equally appropriate in either case. This means that speakers of English, and other languages like it, are obliged to distinguish ‘one' from ‘more than one', but not ‘one sort' from ‘more than one sort'. Why should this be the case? Is it communicatively more important to distinguish ‘one' from ‘more than one'? But then there are certainly languages in which this distinction does not have to be made, and other languages which distinguish a set of members which are different form each other from a set of members which are all of the same kind. In the end, is it pure chance that we happen to speak a language in which one distinction is made and the other isn't? (Matthews 2003: 64-5)

Spaghetti
There are fixed-stressed languages and there are languages which are not. English isn't. Scots Gaelic is, and so is Swahili. In Scots Gaelic, the stress is always (or virtually always) on the first syllable, in Swahili on the penultimate. Nevertheless, there are stress ‘rules' in English, rules with many exceptions. One rule says that nouns should be stressed on the antepenultimate syllable if there is a short vowel in the last syllable (and on the penultimate if not). Against this rule, spaghetti is stressed on the penultimate syllable, the second from behind, although it out to be stressed on the antepenultimate, the third from behind (and in this case the first). It has retained the stress pattern of Italian, the language it was borrowed from. (McMahon 2002: 119-21)

Spice candle
Is the word spice candle (used to refer to a candle which burns aromatically), pronounced the same as spy scandal? The answer is a clear “Yes and No” ( Davis 2004: 81). The phoneme sequence is exactly the same, i.e. phonologically they are the same. On the phonetic level, however, they are different in various ways:

(1)  The vowel of spice is shorter because it occurs in a closed syllable.

(2)  The /s/ at the end of spice will be said rather weakly as the syllable is dying away at that point, whereas the /s/ of scandal is rather strong. The former is a waxing /s/, the latter a waning /s/.

(3)  The /k/ of candle is aspirated, the /k/ of scandal is not because it does not occur alone but is preceded by /s/.

Spill, still, skill
Take a piece of paper and hold it up in front of your mouth by the bottom of the sheet, so the top is free to flap about. Now say pill, till, kill. You will find a little puff of air is released after the first sounds, after /p/ and /t/ and /k/, making the paper move slightly. This puff of air is called aspiration. Now repeat the same exercise saying spill, still, skill. You will find that there is no discernible movement. The sounds are not aspirated this time. So here we have, in all three cases, two different allophones, an aspirated one and a non-aspirated one, of one and the same phoneme. Most speakers are not even aware of the difference, although the difference is clearly noticeable. They are not aware of it because it does not ‘matter', i.e. it does not affect the meaning of the word even if you get your allophones ‘wrong'. It would just sound a bit odd. (McMahon 2002: 18)

Starve
The word is related to German sterben, although it does not mean the same. But it did. In Old English, steorfan meant ‘die', but later it ‘specialised', so to speak, to refer only to a certain kind of death, and then it narrowed down even further (Jucker 2000: 119). The next step would be to use the word if you suffer from hunger but do not die as a consequence. Today, if you say "I am starving" you mean no more than to say you're hungry.

Steal someone's thunder
If you steal someone's thunder you take the credit for something someone else did and for which you do not deserve to get the credit. Steal seems logical enough, but why thunder? The story is this. The 18 th century playwright John Dennis had a simple but brilliant idea: by rattling a sheet of tin, he could imitate the sound of thunder for dramatic effect in of his plays. The play was not well received and had a very short run, but the sound effect was quite a success and was soon used in other plays, including a production of Macbeth. During a performance of this play, Dennis is said to have leapt to his feet and cried in anger: “See how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!” (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 188)

Storey
Is storey related to story? It may well be. In medieval cathedrals, stained class windows sometimes told stories, and as the windows were so tall that they stretched over different floors of the building, all floors might have had their own stories. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 266-7)

Sugar
English sugar is derived from Old French zuchre, which is derived from Italian zucchero, which is derived from Latin succarum, which is derived from Arabic sukkar, which is derived from Persian shakar, which is derived from Sanskrit sakara, which mans ‘gravel'. Although the word is Indian, the plant, the sugar cane, probably originated in New Guinea . One of Alexander the Great's officers described it as ‘honey without bees'. (Flavell & Flavell 2005: 71)