For one of my co-workers, English is not her first language. In fact, English is her 5th language. And even though she has lived in the US for about 30 years, her vocabulary is not the greatest.

The other day during a meeting, she announced that she had to go out at lunch and buy an ottoman because her daughter was involved in an ottoman exchange at school. This didn’t sound quite right to all of us so we asked her if she was really going to buy an ottoman. She said that she was and added that it would be something to hang from a Christmas tree.

At that point, we all responded with “ornament”. When we told her that an ottoman was a foot stool, she started laughing.

It is a good thing that she didn’t say just to buy her an ottoman for Christmas, because we probably would have done so.