>>>>>"Your son's been arrested" Extremely common - more so than "He has been ..." (Which is how it was in the 19th century - no contractions).
>>>>
>>>>I wonder how did the obstetricians manage without the help of the... um, can't even ask you how to say it because I already know there's no word in English for "trudnica" (the woman who is pregnant, or literally, "the laboress"). Too bad, could have been a nice pun.
>>>
>>>Mother-to-be, pregnant woman, expectant woman
>>
>>These are descriptions, not single words.
>
>As you may have heard recently, the hyphen is an endangered species, and its use is declining: heartbeat, today, nevertheless, inasmuch, et al (sure, not all necessarily originally hyphenated). I assume you have no objection to typical German portmanteau wordss (motormekaniken, for ex.), so why not "mothertobe"?

Dragan recently used a nice one that somewhat confused me: whatnot

My initial understanding was that it's "what not" and I wondered whether or not this is a valid way of writing "what not", so I looked it up. It apparently started as "what not" but the meaning is nowadays more specific. In Dutch I think we only have phrases for it.

1. a stand with shelves for bric-a-brac, books, etc.
2. something or anything of the same or similar kind: sheets, pillowcases, towels, napkins, and whatnot.
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[Origin: 1530–40; from the phrase what not?]

Re: Funny coincidence? Thread #1284223 Message #1284851