If you don’t love languages, hear me out: my telugu friend had been affectionately calling me, a hindi speaker, “gundi” for 7 months. We didn’t realize until recently that the word has two completely different meanings in Telugu and Hindi, and that we both had completely different interpretations of her affection.

In Telugu, “gundi” means “smol/button/round/cute”.

In Hindi, “gundi” means “female thug”