He didn’t know the word. He described it instead.

A client was telling me about a material his company makes. He didn’t have the English word for how thick it is.

He kept going anyway. He said it was smooth like a smoothie, then thicker than yoghurt, then “I think the best one is Speisequark.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Quark was perfect.

Most people treat a missing word as the end of the sentence. You stop, you apologise, you decide your English wasn’t good enough today.

The person listening wants to understand the thing. The word is only one way of getting there.

You describe things all day in your own language without noticing you’re doing it. The same skill works in English, and nobody in the room is grading how you got there.

Quick win: When the word won’t come, compare it to something ordinary. “It’s a bit like…“, “It’s thicker than…“, “You use it to…“