Expanding my English

Sometimes I despair of being truly fluent in any language, including my native tongue. There are always words, phrases, colloquialisms that are new or old or just different.

Recently discovered words:

kapok, meaning the silky down that invests the seeds of a silk-cotton tree (kapok tree), Ceiba pentandra, of the East Indies, Africa, and tropical America: used for stuffing pillows, life jackets, etc., and for acoustical insulation.

Discovered via the crossword puzzle -- it was spelled by default when I filled in the surrounding words, and I had to look it up to see if it was real.

hustings: (before 1872) the temporary platform on which candidates for the British Parliament stood when nominated and from which they addressed the electors

A character in a novel was standing near the hustings, and I couldn't set the scene in my mind until I learned what that mean.

sador: a stringed Indian instrument.

Another crossword discovery. I wanted to wedge "sitar" in that spot, but the surrounding words didn't make sense if I did so.

Dar gato por liebre

Friday's word of the day was gato, and several colloquial examples of its use were given, including dar gato por liebre, meaning "to swindle or to con". Literally it means "to give cat for hare", and the etymology is one I'll leave alone.

For some reason, the phrase reminded me of an early Spanish lesson, in which the instructor was trying to tell the class something and one fellow kept saying, "No, you're pulling my leg." The instructor insisted on all Spanish in class, so he asked for a translation...and was perplexed by what he got (tomando el pelo), since it didn't translate directly. Hair =/= leg, so it did not compute in his mind.