‘Thing’ is what I was taught in all of my German classes.
Snopes says this is False.
Thing is das Ding. Zeug can be used to mean ‘stuff’ or ‘things’ (quite like gear can be used to mean just whatever you have sitting in the trunk of your car), but it is a derived thing, and it is certainly not what it means in Flugzeug, which is more like fly-gear or fly-craft.
Interesting. Guess my dad was wrong. Who would have guessed.
To add to the thread: words for refrigerator in Dutch (koelkast) and German (Kühlschrank) literally mean ‘Cooling closet’.
Something that makes MORE sense in English is
“eggnog”-English “lait de poule” or “chicken milk” in French
We come across a lot of these in Canada, since labelings are in both French and English.
Words for things generally make more sense in the language they were created, since dialects change the word over time and also into other languages.
My favorite word in German is handschuh (glove), literally “hand shoe.”
Whatever the case may be for strawberry, what’s the deal with cranberry? What’s the connection between the berry and cran?
However, the inverse is true in French, where it’s called a soutien-gorge, lit. throat support or throat holder. For that matter, the English word bra is short for the French word brassière, i.e. arm protector. Apparently, my country fails female anatomy something fierce 
This thread reminds me of Tahitian words for livestock:
pua’a = pig.
pua’atoro = horned pig = cow.
pua’atane = manly pig = wild boar.
pua’ahorofenua = pig that runs on land = horse.
punu pua’atoro = horned pig in metal = canned beef.
And not livestock, but one of my favorite descriptive words:
uri taata = dog resembling a person = monkey.
The Italian word for “to apply makeup to oneself” is “truccarsi,” which means “to trick oneself.” I don’t know if it’s better or makes more sense than English, but it certainly is funnier.
Short for crane berry. The plant bends over so that it sort of resembles the bird.
Your origin seems to be correct, but not your explanation.
My favorite German word (after Handschuh, actually; good call, Colibri!) is nasskalt, literally ‘wet cold,’ which describes these dreary late Fall days just perfectly, unfortunately.
Huh, I don’t think of it meaning a building at all. To me an unmodified plaza is an open, paved square, same as its cognates in Spanish, French, or Italian. The building usage I only think of in the phrase “shopping plaza” (which I call a mall, anyway) or in proper names of individual buildings (same as calling a building complex Square, Park, or Gardens).
Welsh has:
Oergell (cold cell, w/ cell in the sense of “small room”) = Refrigerator
Rhewgell (frost cell) = Freezer
Llyfrgell (book cell) = Library
A newer word is “popty ping” for microwave.
Popty = oven (from pobi, to bake, and ty^, house)
Ping = ping (the noise)
(You can also say “meicrodon,” a literal calque.)
Breton has marc’h houarn, “iron horse,” for bicycle.
The Malay word for “nature” is semulajadi– a compound of the prefix se- ‘one, entirely’; mula, a word of Tamil origin meaning ‘root, origin’; and jadi, of Sanskrit origin, meaning ‘birth, coming into existence’. It’s an etymology of rare metaphysical poetry that gives insight into the meaning of nature. It might have been a coinage by a philosopher.
You need better teachers and a better online translator. I’ve found this one to be quite useful with lots of different options and suggestions:
Underline mine. A building should not be called a plaza, if you stick to the original meaning. And many of those “individual buildings” called Plaza are nowhere near an open space.
The Spanish word for umbrella is paraguas.
Literally, ‘‘for water.’’ Makes much more sense to me!
Are there any words in this thread yet that aren’t compound words? Because it’d be interesting to argue that #$% is actually a more accurate word for %^& than *^%.
Here’s my contribution: alphabet. Based on the first two letters not in our alphabet, but the Greek alphabet. Some languages word for “alphabet” actually use their own language.
Another option for the meaning is “stops the water”. Umbrella comes from Italian, “little shadow” and is equivalent to the Spanish “sombrilla” (little shadow) or “parasol” (for the sun/stops the sun), which is the same implement minus the waterproofing.