The wild theme continues in this month’s Word Stories. We examine two remarkably similar beasts that hail from opposite corners of the earth: the African plains and the highlands of Asia. 

After beginning in Southern Africa, we now cross the Atlantic for our next selection of Word Stories. Such a journey would prove impossible for the subject of this instalment: a flightless bird known as the rhea or nandu. 

Every word has its story: its unique pathway into the English language. Some are longer and more intricate than others, while some follow a surprising route. The first instalment of this series looks at zebra and quagga, two words describing closely related animals. Like the creatures themselves, neither word is native to the English-speaking world. However, the commonality of their genetics does not extend to the names we give them, one of which originated far from the plains of southern Africa…