There is only one marsupial found in North America, north of Mexico.
We often think that there's a word for everything.
Coming up on Word Matters on Stay Cations and North America's marsupials.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode,
Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea Peter Sokolowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
At last, you've finished your last email, you've set your out-of-office reply,
and you're ready to take some well-deserved time away from your inbox.
And what better place to jet off to than...
I think we often think that there's a word for everything.
That's probably not true, but it's easy to feel like there's a word for everything.
And it turns out there are often words that are pairings in which one of the words is much more frequently used than its parallel pair or its opposite.
One example I can think of is the word ambidextrous.
An ambidextrous means having equal facility with both hands,
but in the Latin, ambi means both, and dexter means right.
So it's both your right hand?
Yeah,
and the implication being most people were right-handed so that you have the facility of your right hand.
There's the word ambicinistris.
It means on the left side.