Kabuki actor's autobiography offers clues to devastating 1855 temblor in Japan

It is Spanish but I am not sure why it’s says US by it when I look in the dictionary. No one uses it in English unless you speak Spanish already.

I don't use the word, but I immediately understood it without registering anything strange about it. It didn't seem out of place until I saw this comment thread where I realized it is not actually a word I've ever used. I guess it must be fairly commonly used by (American?) journalists.

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

In american irregular usage, it's a known word, but the primary reason someone would use it (other than incidentally or acidentally) is to effect an affect; that is to say, the author might have used this word on purpose to draw your attention.

This type of usage is much more common in, for example, poetical writings; it is also used semifrequently in opinion or persuasive writings. The author Stephen King employs this mechanism very frequently. He loves using weird americanisms to evoke a feeling of alienation from his audiences.

most US earthquakes are in California where Spanish is widely spoken and lots of things get Spanish names.

however I don’t think this is common usage. it might be “headline-ese” as the word has fewer characters than earthquake.

I am pretty sure it is related to the Italian "tremore", which means something that vibrates, and is used when referring to earthquakes.

People used to write on paper twice, the second after rotating 90 degrees. And that was in modern times. I imagine paper was quite dear for most of the period since humans created it. It is only fairly recently that it became very cheap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#19th-century_...