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As common words go, this one isn’t that old though. Dates from the late 1st millennium, and has mostly been spread around in the past 500 years. https://en.wiki

As common words go, this one isn’t that old though. Dates from the late 1st millennium, and has mostly been spread around in the past 500 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea I think it’s similar with other products originating largely from a single source, e.g. “chocolate”, “ramen”, “tofu”, “wine”, “cashmere”, “curry”, “khaki”, “shampoo”, ...

ajross 9y ago
But nothing is that simple. Chocolate got mixed up, for example. It's an aztec compound word for the drink made from the plant (xocolatl == "bitter water", per wikipedia). The original term for the plant itself in the sense we use it was the unrelated mayan word cacao.
- schoen 9y ago
  I used to have a folk etymology for chocolate as cacao + lait (or latte), which feels very plausible despite being historically incorrect!
  - nandemo 9y ago
    For some values of "plausible"? I'm pretty sure pre-Colombian mayans and aztecs didn't consume animal milk, as they hadn't domesticated cows, sheeps or goats.
    - taejo 9y ago
      This is presumably a folk etymology of the French or English word "chocolate", not of the Aztec word "xocolatl"
      - schoen 9y ago
        Right, I think I had thought we got it from French and that they had formed it as cocoa/cacao + lait.
        nandemo 9y ago
        Makes sense (but yeah, plausible depending on what you know).
        schoen 9y ago
        I was pretty young when I interpreted it that way, and I don't think I knew anything about the Mesoamerican origins of chocolate when I thought that, or about the Columbian Exchange. I think I figured that basically the same food species were available everywhere, and there were just different cultural ways of preparing and combining them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange
- jacobolus 9y ago
  Cacao and chocolate both come from Nahuatl words (cacaua and xocolatl, respectively, though note that there was also a drink called cacahuaatl: “atl” = water). According to Wiktionary the xocolatl case is actually a bit uncertain (not much evidence of that word in use before 1750), and there are some competing theories that it was maybe related to the word for a stirring stick, or maybe descended from the Yucatec Maya word chocol (hot). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chocolate https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chocolate The version I like is the Maya version from the south of Mexico, now called tascalate (not sure what the Maya name was, or exactly what the etymology is there – the “ate” part comes from the same Nahuatl word for water). But that’s all sort of beside the point that the word chocolate (and cacao) are fairly recent words, which were spread rapidly around the world mostly from one source, so the name was adopted pretty much everywhere as a loanword, and doesn’t change too much between languages.
  - ajross 9y ago
    Yeah, but it was a loan word in Nahuatl too. I was sure the original domestication was mayan, but wikipedia tells me that the original word comes from mixe-zoque (so plausibly Olmec).

ajross 9y ago

But nothing is that simple. Chocolate got mixed up, for example. It's an aztec compound word for the drink made from the plant (xocolatl == "bitter water", per wikipedia). The original term for the plant itself in the sense we use it was the unrelated mayan word cacao.

schoen 9y ago
I used to have a folk etymology for chocolate as cacao + lait (or latte), which feels very plausible despite being historically incorrect!
- nandemo 9y ago
  For some values of "plausible"? I'm pretty sure pre-Colombian mayans and aztecs didn't consume animal milk, as they hadn't domesticated cows, sheeps or goats.
  - taejo 9y ago
    This is presumably a folk etymology of the French or English word "chocolate", not of the Aztec word "xocolatl"
    - schoen 9y ago
      Right, I think I had thought we got it from French and that they had formed it as cocoa/cacao + lait.
      - nandemo 9y ago
        Makes sense (but yeah, plausible depending on what you know).
        schoen 9y ago
        I was pretty young when I interpreted it that way, and I don't think I knew anything about the Mesoamerican origins of chocolate when I thought that, or about the Columbian Exchange. I think I figured that basically the same food species were available everywhere, and there were just different cultural ways of preparing and combining them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange
jacobolus 9y ago
Cacao and chocolate both come from Nahuatl words (cacaua and xocolatl, respectively, though note that there was also a drink called cacahuaatl: “atl” = water). According to Wiktionary the xocolatl case is actually a bit uncertain (not much evidence of that word in use before 1750), and there are some competing theories that it was maybe related to the word for a stirring stick, or maybe descended from the Yucatec Maya word chocol (hot). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chocolate https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chocolate The version I like is the Maya version from the south of Mexico, now called tascalate (not sure what the Maya name was, or exactly what the etymology is there – the “ate” part comes from the same Nahuatl word for water). But that’s all sort of beside the point that the word chocolate (and cacao) are fairly recent words, which were spread rapidly around the world mostly from one source, so the name was adopted pretty much everywhere as a loanword, and doesn’t change too much between languages.
- ajross 9y ago
  Yeah, but it was a loan word in Nahuatl too. I was sure the original domestication was mayan, but wikipedia tells me that the original word comes from mixe-zoque (so plausibly Olmec).