Hello all! I've been on the mailing list for A.W.A.D for a while now, but I've finally mustered up some gusto and made my way over to the forums.

Yesterday's (or for some of us still, today's) word of the day was 'paragon'. I've already sent this message to The Wordsmith, but thought I might share it here in case anyone can answer the question I pose in summary of my thoughts on the topic:

"As an avid gamer, I would always associate the words 'paladin' and 'paragon' with one another in my mind, it became one of my favourite words. I would arbitrarily recite "A paragon of virtue", when either word came to mind.

During a volunteer stint in Poland, I was delighted to discover they too had the word 'paragon' in their vocabulary! It, however, meant 'receipt'.

From many experiences after this I became fascinated with the phenomenon of words sharing the same phonetic sound or alphabetic spelling between differing languages but having completely different meanings. Could anybody please tell me the name for these curiosities?"

Disclaimer:

Coming from a rural town in Australia I'd really had little to NO experience with a foreign language before setting foot into Europe (I want to use 'onto' instead to make me sound like a pioneer or great adventurer). Long story short, even though I'm back home now after a good 9 months in Poland - and having picked up a fair bit of Polish - I'm enamoured by the world of languages. While I'm only nineteen, given the passion I've developed, I do feel rather guilty not having approached this sooner (and resentful that my Polish grandfather hadn't passed on the language to my mother to pass onto me! wink )