Spices and herbs, Part 20: Eng. horseradish and Sp. rábano picante

[This entry is an excerpt from the chapter "Spices, herbs, and other condiments" of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

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Eng. horseradish and Sp. rábano picante

Horseradish is a perennial plant of the Brassicaceae family, which includes mustard, wasabi, broccoli, and cabbage, and is native to southeastern Europe and western Asia. Its botanical name is Armoracia rusticana, though it used to be Cochlearia armoracia in Linnaeus’s classification. The root and the leaves of this plant were used for medicinal purposes during the Middle Ages and the root, which has a very pungent flavor, has been used, scraped or grated, as a condiment in northern Europe for a long time as well.

Horseradish sauce, also known as horseradish or prepared horseradish, is made from the root of this plant and vinegar. This sauce is white to creamy-beige in color and it is commonly used as a condiment in Germanic and Slavic countries in a way similar to how mustard is used (in France it is called raifort). This condiment is not very common in the Spanish-speaking world, however. To the extent that it is used, the horseradish plant is known as rábano picante or rábano silvestre (also rábano rusticano or raíz picante, among other names). The word rábano in the Spanish name of this plant is the common translation for Eng. radish (see below). In the US, what is called horseradish sauce may contain mayonnaise or some other ingredients as a form of dressing. Prepared horseradish is also used in cocktails such as Bloody Mary, and in cocktail sauce more generally, as well as in sandwich spread. In Argentina, horseradish (sauce) is known as pasta de rábano picante, though the immigrants who introduced this condiment into the country also know it as cren (from its German name kren) or jren (from its Slavic name hren).

Figure 192: Horseradish plant.[i]

The word horseradish [ˈhɔɹs.ˌɹæ.dɪʃ] has been the English name for this plant since the late 16th century. Horseradish should not be confused with regular radish, whose botanical name is Raphanus sativus, an edible root plant of the same Brassicaceae family which was domesticated in Europe thousands of years ago. The two plants belong to the same family, Brassicaceae, but regular radish is of the Raphanus genus. The name rábano ‘radish’ in Spanish comes from the Latin name for the plant, which gives name to the genus, namely răphănus ‘radish’, a loanword from Ancient Greek ῥάφανος (rháphanos), a word that meant ‘radish’ but which may have also had other meanings as well. This Greek word may be related to or derived from the word ῥάπυς (rhápus) or ῥᾰ́φῠς (rháphus) meaning ‘turnip’.

The English word radish [ˈɹæ.dɪʃ] (rædic in Old English and radiche in Middle English) is not related to Lat. răphănus, but it is also a Latin borrowing. It comes ultimately from Lat. rādīcem, the accusative form of the noun rādix meaning ‘root’, which is also the source of patrimonial Sp. raíz ‘root’. In other words, Eng. radish and Sp. raíz are cognates. The word root in English is a patrimonial one which descends from the same Proto-Indo-European root as the Latin word rādix, namely *wrād- (or *wréh₂ds), which makes these words cognate as well, if not exact cognates (cf. Part I, Chapter 1, §1.2.[ii]

The name horseradish is obviously derived from the word radish, but what is the horse part all about? You may be surprised to know that it does not have anything to do with horses. Rather, the modifier horse used to be employed figuratively at one time in English with the sense ‘strong, large, coarse’. This same sense of the modifier horse is found in expressions such as horse mushroom, horse-parsley, and horse-weed or horse-mint.[1]

Figure 193: Radishes[iii]

As we mentioned earlier, the horseradish is part of the Brassicaceae family of flowering plants, pronounced [ˌbɹæ.sɪ.ˈkeɪ̯.si.i] in English (Sp. brasicáceas). This family is also know botanically as the Cruciferae [kɹu.ˈsɪ.fə.ɹi] and, more commonly, as the crucifers, the mustards, or even the cabbage family (Sp. crucíferas). The botanical name Brassicaceae is a New Latin term derived from Latin brassĭca ‘cabbage’, and the ending ‑aceae which is used to form the name of taxonomic families of plants, algae, bacteria, and fungi (the equivalent for animals is ‑idae). It comes from the Latin ending ‑ācĕ‑ae, feminine plural of ‑ācĕ‑us, which meant something like ‘resembling’, cf. Eng. (cf. Lat. rŏsācĕus ‘made of roses’, source of Sp. rosáceo/a ‘rose-colored, pinkish’).

The alternative botanical term for this family of plants is Cruciferae, which means ‘cross-bearing’ since it is formed with the root cruc‑ of the noun crux ‘cross’ and the root fer‑ of the verb ferre ‘to bear’ (principal parts: ferō, ferre, tulī/tetulī, lātum). Vegetables from this family are known as cruciferous vegetables ([kɹu.ˈsɪ.fəɹ.əs]; Sp. verduras crucíferas), which, besides radish (Sp. rábano), and horseradish (Sp. rábano picante), include turnip (Sp. nabo), rape (Sp. colza), wasabi or Japanese horseradish (Sp. wasabi or rábano picante japonés), and several varieties or cultivars of the species Brassica oleracea (the cabbages): broccoli (Sp. brécol or brócoli), cabbage (Sp. col, berza, or repollo), cauliflower (Sp. coliflor), kale (Sp. col rizada or repollo rizado).[2]

Let us look now at the botanical name of the horseradish plant, Armoracia rusticana. The genus name Armoracia comes from the Latin word armŏrăcĭa, which meant ‘horseradish’ (variants of this name are armŏrăcĕa and armŏrăcĭum). It is not clear what the source of this word is. Some say it is a loan from Ancient Greek and others a loan or from a Celtic language. Lat. armŏrăcĭa is the original source of the Spanish word remolacha ‘beet’ (beetroot in British English), a very different species of plant, which Corominas thinks came into Spanish from Italian ramolaccio, which is used in this language for both ‘radish’ and ‘horseradish’ (not for ‘beet’). The loanword remolacha replaced the older word betarraga in some dialects of Spanish, though the latter is still used in southern Spain and in American Spanish. (Sp. betarraga was a loanword from French betterave, formed from bette ‘Swiss chard’, Sp. acelga, and rave ‘turnip’, Sp. nabo.)

As for the second part of the horseradish species name, rusticana, this is the feminine form of Latin rūsticānus ‘rustic’, a variant found in Cicero of the word rūsticus ‘of the country, rural, rustic’, much like this word’s antonym urbānus ‘urban’ was derived from the noun urbs ‘city’ by means of the adjectival suffix ‑ān‑ (cf. Part I, Chapter 8). The word is ultimately derived from rūs ‘countryside, farm, village’ (genitive: rūris, accusative: rūs; full root: rūr‑; a word that descends from Proto-Indo-European *rewh₁- ‘free space’, which is also the source of Eng. room). Another adjective derived from this noun was post-classical rūrālis ‘of or belonging to the country, rural, rustic’, source of Eng. rural [ˈɹuɹ.əɫ] and Sp. rural [ru.ˈɾal].

As we mentioned earlier, there was an earlier botanical name for the horseradish plant, the one given to it by the father of modern classification, 18th century Swedish naturalist and botanist Carl Linnaeus, who created the binomial nomenclature and taxonomy of organisms (plants and animals, botanical and zoological nomenclature) that we have seen exemplified in this chapter.[3] In 1753, Linnaeus gave the horseradish plant the name Cochlearia armoracia, but in 1800, this plant was reclassified as belonging to the genus Armoracia by Gaertner, Meyer, & Scherbius. The word Cochlearia is a New Latin one, formed from Latin cochlear ‘spoon’ and the suffix ‑ia, a name that is motivated by the shape of the leaves of plants in this genus.[4]

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[1] A horse mushroom is ‘a species of edible mushroom, Agaricus arvensis, larger and coarser than the common mushroom’ (OED). Horse-parsley is ‘a large-leaved umbelliferous plant, Smyrnium Olusatrum’ (OED).

[2] Other vegetables in this species are Brussels sprouts (Sp. coles de Bruselas), Chinese cabbage (Sp. repollo chino or col de China). Kale is also known as collard, borecole, cole, or colewort. These words can refer to the same or to different varieties of the species Brassica oleracea, in particular var. acephala (lit. ‘headless’), since these varieties of cabbage  do not have a heart but rather long edible leaves, known sometimes as collard greens (Sp. berza, col forrajera, among other names). The word kale was originally a variant of the word cole. The word cole is now mostly archaic, except in the compound coleslaw in the US (also spelled cole slaw and cole-slaw), which is the name of ‘a salad of finely shredded raw cabbage and sometimes shredded carrots, dressed with mayonnaise or a vinaigrette’ (AHD). The name coleslaw is an 18th century calque from Dutch koolsla. The word cole was used before for plants in this species, in particular cabbage, kale, and rape. The word cole comes ultimately from Lat. caulis ‘stem, cabbage’, which is also the source of patrimonial Sp. col. The word berza is common in Spain for this vegetable. It comes from Vulgar Latin vĭrdĭa, from Classical Latin vĭrĭdĭa ‘green things, vegetables’, neuter plural form of Latin vĭrĭdis ‘green’ (vĭrdis in Vulgar Latin, the source of Sp. verde ‘green’).

[3]  Linnæus wrote many of his scientific works in Latin, as was common at the time. Linnæus is itself a Latin adaptation of the Lind family name, meaning ‘linden, lime tree’, one that was adopted by Linnæus’s father, Nicolaus (Nils) Ingemarsson, as a family name (Linnæa in the feminine). Linnæus’s family spoke Latin at home and it is said that he learned Latin before he learned Swedish. Linnaeus signed his works written in Latin as Carolus Linnaeus, Carolus being the Latin rendering of his name Carl.

[4] The word cochlear (also cochleare or coclear, among other possibilities) was originally referred to a tool for extracting snails. This is obvious in the name of the instrument, which was originally an adjective derived from cochlea ‘snail, snail-shell’ by means of the adjective forming suffix ‑ār‑(is). This Latin noun is a loanword from Ancient Greek κοχλίας (kokhlías) ‘spiral, snail shell’. This Latin word is the source of patrimonial Sp. cuchara ‘spoon’. Eng. cochlear is an adjective that means ‘of or pertaining to the cochlea’ (Sp. coclear, de la cóclea). The noun cochlea (Sp. cóclea) refers to ‘a spiral-shaped cavity of the inner ear that resembles a snail shell and contains nerve endings essential for hearing’ (AHD).

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[i] Cf. “Armoracia rusticana”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armoracia_rusticana.jpg#/media/File:Armoracia_rusticana.jpg

[ii] Cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/wr%C3%A9h%E2%82%82ds

[iii] Source: “Radish 3371103037 4ab07db0bf o” by Self, en:User:Jengod - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Radish_3371103037_4ab07db0bf_o.jpg#/media/File:Radish_3371103037_4ab07db0bf_o.jpg

Spices and herbs, Part 19: Eng. ginger and Sp. jengibre

[This entry is an excerpt from the chapter "Spices, herbs, and other condiments" of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

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Eng. ginger and Sp. jengibre

Ginger is the name of a plant ‘of tropical southeast Asia having yellowish-green flowers and a pungent aromatic rhizome’, as well as the name of the plant’s rhizome itself (AHD). A rhizome, also known as rootstalk or rootstock, is ‘a horizontal, usually underground stem that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes’ (AHD). This rhizome is used as a hot, fragrant spice, whether as a young and fresh, which has a mild flavor, or else, as a mature, dried and fibrous rhizome, typically powdered. It is used this way in the cuisines of India and other Asian countries, including China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. It is also used as a medicinal plant in many cultures with medicinal properties such as antiarthritis, antiinflammatory, antidiabetic, antibacterial, antifungal, and anticancer.

This perennial herbaceous plant is indigenous to tropical regions of Asia from where it spread to other parts of Asia and eventually to West Africa and the Caribbean. It is one of the spices that started being exported from Asia to Europe in the 5th century CE. Ginger production today is highest in India, where twice as much ginger is produced as in each of the next two producers, Nigeria and China. Other major producers are Indonesia, Nepal, and Thailand. In the English-speaking world, ginger is often used in sweet foods and drinks, such as ginger ale, ginger bread, and ginger snaps. In the Spanish-speaking world, ginger is much less common.

Figure 190: (left) ginger plant drawing; (right) fresh ginger rhizome [i]

The word ginger [’ʤɪn.ʤəɹ] had many different spellings (and pronunciations) in earlier times, including gingere in Middle English and gingifer in Late Old English. This word is presumably a borrowing from post-Classical Latin gingiber, with some influence of the equivalent Anglo Norman and Old French equivalent word. Post-Classical Latin gingiber was a corruption of an earlier version of the word, namely zingĭberi (indeclinable), also spelled zingiber, zinziber, and zinziberi. (Remember that the letter 〈z〉 in Latin was a loaned letter from Greek and it represented a Greek sound that did not exist in Latin, probably [ʣ], cf. Part I, Chapter 8, §8.2.) This Latin word was a borrowing from Late Hellenistic Greek ζιγγίβερις (zingíberis), which was itself a loanword from a Dravidian language of South India, such as Pali siṅgivera (in the Indo-European Sanskrit language, the word was शृङ्गवेर, transliterated as śṛṅgavera). According to Corominas, the initial g in Medieval Latin represents de [dj] sound combination, which is how the Greek z was imitated in popular Latin speech.

Figure 191: Two varieties of ginger.[ii]

The Spanish name for this plant and this root is jengibre [xeŋ.ˈxi.βɾe], which was earlier spelled gengibre and which is obviously a cognate of Eng. ginger, though the Spanish word looks more like the Latin word it came from than its English counterpart (except of the change in the spelling from 〈g〉 to 〈j〉, which is relatively recent). Spanish may have taken the word from Occitan or from Catalan, both of which had gingibre or gingebre for this word. This was not a patrimonial Spanish word, for if it had been, it would have changed to *enzebre, by applying the regular, expected sound changes, according to Corominas.

The botanical name of this plant is Zingiber officinale. It is part of the Zingiber genus of the Zingiberaceae family, which includes turmeric, cardamom, and galangal (Sp. cardamom).  The genus name Zingiber (Eng. [ˈzɪnʤɪbəɹ]) was, of course, comes from an early version of the Latin word for ginger (see above). As for the species epithet officinale, it comes from Latin officīnāle, neuter form of officīnālis, an adjective that meant ‘workshop, laboratory, office’ and in botany ‘medicinal’ (used as adjectives), but which in medieval Latin came to be used as a noun meaning ‘storeroom for medicines’. English and Spanish have borrowed this Latin adjective as Eng. officinal [ə.ˈfɪ.sɪ.nəl] and Sp. oficinal [o.fi.θi.ˈnal] to refer to herbs or drugs standardly used in medicine and thus ‘kept in stock by druggists : available without special preparation or compounding : not magistral’ (WNTIU). (The word is admittedly rare nowadays and one major dictionary even says that Eng. officinal is obsolete, though most do not.) This Latin adjective is derived from the noun officīna ‘a workshop, factory, laboratory’, from an early Latin opificīna, a noun derived from the noun opifex ‘a worker, workman, mechanic, artisan’ (L&S).[1]

In English, the word ginger is used for a color, namely for ‘a reddish-yellow or orange-brown color, resembling that of dried and powdered ginger’, especially ‘with reference to hair, fur, plumage, etc.’ (OED, sense 5b). This includes, for instance, ‘a cat with primarily orange-colored fur, typically marked with stripes; a ginger cat’ (OED, sense 5c). Also, colloquially and mostly in Britain, ginger is used as a noun or adjective for ‘a reddish-yellow or (light) orange-brown hair, typically characterized by pale skin and freckles; (more generally) any person with reddish hair’, as well as for a person with such hair, ‘frequently as a nickname’ (OED, sense 5a), e.g. She has ginger hair (Sp. Es pelirroja or Tiene el pelo rojo). This hair coloration is caused by a recessive gene, which expresses itself when a person gets two copies of it, one from each parent. The OED adds that this use of ginger is ‘sometimes derogatory, reflecting negative attitudes towards red-headed people’ (see below). This sense of the word is sometimes derogatorily pronounced [’ʤɪŋəɹ], which rhymes with singer. In the slang of some dialects of English, the word ginger is used as an insult to refer to a homosexual man and even as a mass noun to homosexuals in general and to homosexuality (OED, sense 10).

As we said earlier, this spice is not as common in the Spanish-speaking world as in the English world and thus the word is not as common either. Sp. jengibre is not used for the color either the way Eng. ginger is, which means this sense of ginger translates as rojo ‘lit. red’, anaranjado ‘lit. orange-color’, or color zanahoria ‘lit. carrot color’ when talking about the color and rojo/a or pelirrojo/a as an adjective when talking about a red-haired person (see below). A ginger cat, on the other hand, would be gato rojizo, ‘lit. reddish cat’. The English phrase ginger ale has been borrowed into some dialects of Spanish as ginger-ale with a pronunciation that is an approximation of the English one, namely [ˈʝiɲʝeɾei̯l], not a spelling pronunciation. This word is found in the DLE, as a foreign word (extranjerismo), so it must be written in italics or within quotes as all foreign words (regardless of whether it is in the Academy’s dictionary or not).

As we just saw, the main Spanish noun or adjective for ginger hair or ginger hair person is pelirrojo/a, a compound formed with the root pel‑ of the word pelo ‘hair’, and the adjective rojo/a ‘red’, with the ‑i‑ linking vowel in the style of Latin compounds (cf. Part I, Chapter 5, §5.8.3). Other hair-color words like this one are pelirrubio/a ‘blonde-haired’ (synonym of rubio), peliblanco/a ‘white-haired’ (said of animals; equivalent to de pelo blanco), pelicano/a ‘white-haired’ (said of people; equivalent to canoso/a or con canas), pelilargo/a ‘long-haired’ (equivalent to de pelo largo), pelicorto ‘short-haired’ (equivalent to de pelo corto), and pelitieso/a ‘stiff-haired’ (equivalent to de pelo tieso).[2]

The hair color known as red hair or ginger hair is quite rare, since it is found in only about 1% of the human population and less than 5% of people of European descent. There are many different shades of red/ginger hair, including deep burgundy, bright copper (reddish-brown or auburn), burnt orange or red-orange, and strawberry blond. Ginger hair is more common among Celtic people, with around 10% of the people of Ireland, 6% of the people of Scotland, and 4% of the people of England having this color hair.[iii]

Ginger hair has been greatly admired at times, but it has also been feared and disparaged and redheads have been discriminated against and harassed. There are many popular stereotypes about red-haired people, known as redheads in English since the early 16th century, such as that red-haired women are very sexually active and wild or that red-haired men are quick-tempered and violent. In the Middle Ages, people with certain shades of ginger hair were associated with witches and vampires. Even Judas Iscariot, who in the Christian mythological tradition was the apostle who betrayed Jesus, is often portrayed as having red hair.

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[1] The Latin noun officina is, of course, the source of Sp. oficina ‘office’, which is not strictly speaking a cognate of Eng. office despite sharing some meanings. (Traditionally, Spanish oficina refers to a place where professional administrative or managerial work is performed, whereas a professional person’s office (room) is referred to as a despacho.) English office, pronounced [ˈɔfəs] or [ˈɑfəs] in the US and [ˈɒfɪs] in Britain, is a loanword from Old French office, which is a loanword from classical Latin officium ‘task, a person’s business, duty, function, moral obligation, official position or employment’ (cf. Sp. oficio, a word that means ‘job, occupation, trade’, as well as ‘role, function’).

[2] The adjective peliagudo/a, which means ‘difficult, tricky’ when referring to a problem, and ‘thorny’ when referring to an issue or matter, seems be formed on the same pattern from pelo and agudo ‘sharp, acute’. Corominas, however, thinks that this word was probably created on the model of puntiagudo/a ‘pointed, sharp-pointed’ which would be an alteration of an unattested *puntegudo, a cognate of Catalan punxegut (same meaning), by misanalysis of the word as containing the word agudo.

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[i] Sources: (left) “Koeh-146-no text” by Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen - List of Koehler Images. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Koeh-146-no_text.jpg#/media/File:Koeh-146-no_text.jpg; (right) “Ingwer 2 fcm” by Photograph: Frank C. Müller, Baden-Baden - Self-photographed. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ingwer_2_fcm.jpg#/media/File:Ingwer_2_fcm.jpg

[ii] Source: By Anna Frodesiak - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10105589 (2018.10.17)

[iii] Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair

Spices and herbs, Part 18: Eng. curry and Sp. curry/curri

[This entry is an excerpt from the chapter "Spices, herbs, and other condiments" of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

Go to the listing of entries on spices, herbs and other condiments

Eng. curry and Sp. curry/curri

The word curry is used for a type of dish or family of dishes typical of South and Southeast Asian cuisines made with a spiced sauce or relish made from a combination of spices or herbs, such as onion, ginger, turmeric, garlic, coriander, cumin, as well as fresh or dried chilies, some of which are hot. A curry is a type of stew (Sp. estofado, guisado, guiso) and there are many different types in the many varied cuisines of this part of the world. A curry may contain meat, poultry, fish, or shellfish, with or without vegetables. However, there are, also vegetarian curries and, actually, in India, most curries are vegetarian, without meat, chicken, or fish.

Actually, it was Europeans who lumped the large variety of savory stews found in the Indian subcontinent into a category that they came to call curry. The British brought Asian curry back to Great Britain, modifying it along the way, just like the Dutch brought similar dishes to the Netherlands from what today is Indonesia. The first the Indian curry house opened in London in 1810. In time, curry has become extremely popular in Britain, to the extent that some consider curry a true national dish.[1] Different varieties of curries have also made it to other countries’ cuisines, such as those of China, Japan, Korea, South Africa, and the West Indies.

Figure 189: Chicken tikka masala, a type of chicken curry,

one of the most popular dishes of Southeast Asia in the world.[i]

The word curry, pronounced [ˈkʰɜɹi] in North American English and [ˈkʰʌɹi] in British English, is said to come from the Tamil language of Sri Lanka and southern India, from the word  கறி (kaṟi), which meant ‘sauce, relish for rice’ (OED). The equivalent word in Kannada, another language of south India, is karil, from where comes the Portuguese word for ‘curry’, caril. French borrowed the word as cari, though today the English loanword curry is more common (it is pronounced [ky.ˈʀi]). Spanish too has borrowed the word curry from English for this type of dish, which is rare in the Spanish-speaking world. It is pronounced as it is spelled, namely [ˈku.ri]. The spelling curri has also been proposed and it is acceptable according to the DPD.

The actual spelling of the English word curry is thought to have been influenced by an obsolete English word cury meaning ‘cookery’ or ‘cooked dish’. This word is a 14th century loan from Old French queurie that meant ‘cookery, kitchen’ and which is ultimately derived from a word that was derived from Vulgar Latin cocus ‘cook’ (coquus in Classical Latin). This same Latin root coc‑ is found in English words such as cook and in Spanish words such as cocina ‘kitchen’, cocinar ‘to cook’ and cocer ‘to cook’ (all three of them patrimonial words).

We should mention that English has another, unrelated word curry, a verb, which has two distantly related meanings. One of these meanings is used primarily in North America, and it is ‘to groom (a horse) with a currycomb’ (Sp. almohazar) (AHD). The other meaning is ‘to prepare (tanned hides) for use, as by soaking or coloring’ (Sp. curtir) (AHD). This word comes from Anglo-Norman curreier ‘to prepare, arrange’, which comes from Vulgar Latin *conrēdāre, a verb formed from the prefix com‑ ‘with’ and the Vulgar Latin verb *rēdāre ‘to make ready’, which is a Germanic loan related to Eng. ready, from Proto-Germanic *raidaz ‘ready, arranged, prepared’. Spanish did not inherit this any version of this Vulgar Latin verb.[2] Perhaps the most common use of the verb to curry nowadays is in the idiomatic phrase to curry favor (with somebody), which means ‘to seek or gain favor by fawning or flattery’ (AHD) (in Spanish: congraciarse con alguien, hacerle la pelota a alguien (Spain, informal), etc.).

Although the word curry is used for the type of dish that we have been discussing, it is also used to refer to the sauce or relish used to make these dishes, since after all, the sauce is what the word curry originally referred to. The OED describes this sense of the word curry (‘curry sauce’) as ‘a preparation of meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric, and used as a relish or flavoring, especially for dishes composed of or served with rice’.

In addition, the word curry is also used nowadays to refer to a commercially sold powdered mixture of spices used to make this dish, which is also known as curry powder (Sp. curri en polvo, or just curri). This powder is actually a Western invention, one dating back to the 19th century, and not a specific traditional mix of ingredients or something that was ever used where curry originated. The spice mixture known as curry varies a great deal depending on the manufacturer. Commonly found spices in curry powder blends are coriander, cumin, turmeric, ginger, fenugreek, and chili peppers. Less common ingredients are garlic, asafetida, fennel seed, caraway, cinnamon, clove, mustard seed, green cardamom, black cardamom, nutmeg, long pepper, and black pepper.[ii]

Curry that has chicken in it is very popular in some places. Such dishes are popularly known as chicken curry. In addition, it can also be referred to by using the adjective curried, as in curried chicken. Both phrases would be translated into Spanish as pollo al curry.[3] The word curried is, of course, the past participle of the verb to curry, derived from the noun curry by conversion (cf. Part I, Chapter 5, §5.7). This verb, which means ‘to prepare or flavor with a curry sauce’, is not as common as the derived adjective curried.

We should mention that there is also a plant known as curry plant, so called because of the strong smell of its leaves, which is reminiscent of the smell of curry powder. The botanical name of this plant is Helichrysum italicum, a flowering plant from the daisy family (Asteraceae). Although this plant is occasionally used as a spice, it has nothing to do with the curry that we have been talking about. This plant is also not related to a tree popularly known as the curry tree, which produces an aromatic leaf often used in Indian and Sri Lankan cuisines, including some curries. The leaf of this plant is popularly known as curry leaf. This tree is native to India and Sri Lanka and its botanical name is Murraya koenigii.[4]

Eng. stew and Sp. estofado

As an aside in this section about curry, let us look at the words Eng. stew and its Spanish equivalent estofado, since we said that a curry is a type of stew. These two words are related to each other and may perhaps be related to the words Eng. stove ~ Sp. estufa as well.

Although the full history of the words Eng. stew and Sp. estofado is a bit confused, they seem to ultimately come from the Vulgar Latin verb *stufare ‘to evaporate, steam off’ (another version of this verb is *stupare). This word is presumably a loanword and adaptation from Ancient Greek εκτύφειν (ektúphein) ‘to smoke’, derived from the verb τύφειν (túphein) ‘to raise smoke, smolder’.[5] These Greek verbs are derived from the noun τύφος (túphos) ‘steam, fever, stupor’, a word also found in Vulgar Latin as *tūfus ‘hot vapor, steam’. The New Latin word tȳphus also comes from this Greek word, resulting in Eng. typhus and Sp. tifus. Sp. tufo ‘strong smell’ is also a descendant of Lat. tūfus.[6]

The English verb to stew is a 14th century loan from Old French estuver ‘to have a hot bath, plunge into a bath; stew’ (cf. Modern French étuver; Provençal estubar; the related Old French noun estuve meant ‘large bath’, Mod. Fr. étuve). The verb to stew is used today primarily for a form of cooking since its primary meaning is to ‘cook or be cooked slowly in liquid in a closed dish or pan’ (COED). There are other, less common meanings for this verb, including some informal ones, such as ‘to suffer with oppressive heat or stuffy confinement; swelter’ (AHD).

The noun stew with the meaning ‘a dish cooked by stewing, especially a mixture of meat or fish and vegetables with stock’ (AHD) is derived from the verb to stew and it is first attested in the mid-18th century. There was an earlier noun stew also derived from the verb that meant ‘heated room’ and ‘vessel for boiling, a caldron’ (OED).

One Spanish equivalent of the English verb stew is estofar, which is a cognate of Eng. stew and which also presumably came into the language through French estuver or, actually, because of its sounds, probably through a variant of this French verb influenced by its Italian cognate, stufare, or else influenced by a different, unrelated Old French verb estofer (Modern French étouffer) that meant ‘to stifle, suffocate, choke, smother (a fire)’, a verb that comes from Vulgar Latin *stuffare ‘to stuff, cover’.[7] Sp. estofar is first attested in the early 16th century and other variants of this word were estubar, estobar, and estufar.[8]

Just like English derived the noun stew from the verb stew by conversion, Spanish derived the noun estofado from the past participle of the verb estofar, also by conversion.

Actually, more common than the verb estofar in Modern Spanish for the meaning ‘to stew’ is the verb guisar, a verb that originally meant ‘to prepare, arrange’. Today, the verb guisar is used in some dialects as equivalent of cocinar ‘to cook’, as in El pollo se guisó en muy poco tiempo ‘The chicken cooked very quickly’ (VOX), equivalent in other dialects to El pollo se hizo en muy poco tiempo or El pollo se cocinó en muy poco tiempo.  More commonly, however, the verb guisar means ‘to stew’. It can also translate the English verb to braise, which means ‘fry (food) lightly and then stew slowly in a closed container’ (COED).

The switch in meaning from ‘prepare’ to ‘cook’ for the verb guisar came obviously by the common use of this verb with objects having to do with food. There is a common Spanish saying with guisar, namely Tú te lo guisas, tú te lo comes, which is equivalent to the English expression You have made your bed, now you must lie on it.

Sp. guisar is an old word, attested in the Cid poem already with the original meaning. This verb was derived, in Spanish, from the noun guisa ‘manner, way, guise’, which is archaic today. This noun’s source is Germanic, from a Germanic word that descended from Proto-Germanic *wīsǭ ‘manner, way’, perhaps from Old Frankish *wīsa (same meaning). Old English had a patrimonial word wīse that meant the same thing which descended from the same Proto-Germanic word. This word is archaic or obsolete today, but it has survived in the suffix ‑wise, as in clockwise, lengthwise, moneywise, publicity-wise. The English word wise that means ‘having or showing experience, knowledge, and good judgement’ (COED) is a patrimonial word derived from the same Germanic root, since it comes from Old Germanic *wīsaz. The English word guise ‘a way in which someone or something appears or is presented’ (COED) is a doublet of the word wise that means ‘manner, way’. It is a loanword from French, which took it from the Frankish word we just mentioned, as well as of Sp. guisa.

From the verb guisar, we get the noun guisado, derived from the verb’s past participle by conversion, as well as its synonym guiso. Both of these words mean ‘stew’ and, just as in the case of the verb, is more common than estofado to express this meaning. The original meaning of guisado was ‘reasonable’, and later ‘arrangement’, since the original meaning of the verb guisar was ‘to arrange’, but those meanings are now obsolete. The noun guiso as equivalent of food-related guisado seems to have come later into the language.

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[1] What is now India, along with Pakistan and Bangladesh, was part of the British Empire from the early 18th century until 1947. This explains why Great Britain received culinary influences from those lands, such as this one. It also explains why there are so many natives of India and Pakistan living in Great Britain and other parts of the British Commonwealth and other parts of the English-speaking world, including the United States.

[2] Sp. enredar ‘to catch in a net, net; to tangle up, entangle; etc.’ is unrelated to Eng. ready, since it comes from red ‘net’, which comes from Lat. rēte (gen. rētis, acc. rēte).

[3] Spanish uses al, al la, and a lo (i.e. a + definite article) followed by a noun or adjective, to indicate the manner or style in which something is done or made, e.g. a la española ‘the Spanish way’, a la antigua ‘the old-fashioned way’. The gender of the article depends on the gender of the noun that follows. When an adjective follows, there is an understood noun there, typically manera or usanza ‘manner, way’, which are feminine and hence a la is more common (but cf. al curri). It is used very often to indicate the manner of preparing a food, as in espaguetis a la milanesa ‘Spaghetti Milanese’ (lit. ‘spaghetti made the Milan way’). This construction with the preposition a is most likely a calque from the French expression à la ‘in the manner of’, borrowed into English for many expressions related to cooking, fashion, and style, e.g. walking with a swagger à la John Wayne (MWALD) or She has her hair blonde and curly, à la Marilyn Monroe (CALD). The variant a lo is often used with names, whether male or female, e.g. un corte de pelo a lo Marlon Brando ‘a Marlon Brando type haircut’.

[4] The two parts of this tree’s species name commemorate two different 18th century botanists. The genus name Murraya comes from botanist Johan Andreas Murray. The species name koenigii comes from Johann König.

[5] The precursors of *stufare and *stupare could have been the unattested Late Latin verbs *extūpāre and *extūfāre, respectively; note that the Latin prefix ex‑ ‘off’ is equivalent to Greek εκ‑.

[6] Eng. typhus and Sp. tifus refer, of course, to ‘any of several forms of infectious disease caused by [bacteria of the genus] rickettsia, especially those transmitted by fleas, lice, or mites, and characterized generally by severe headache, sustained high fever, depression, delirium, and the eruption of red rashes on the skin’ (AHD).

The cognate nouns Eng. typhoon and Sp. tifón are not thought to be related to the Greek word τύφος (túphos). They are thought to come from the Sinitic 大風 ‘big wind’ (Mandarin dàfēng). The spelling of the English word, however, is clearly influenced by Ancient Greek τῡϕῶν (tuphôn) ‘whirlwind’ (Τυφῶν Tuphôn was also the name of a monster with 100 heads in Greek mythology). There is a theory that the Chinese word may ultimately come from Ancient Greek, through Arabic or Indian languages, but that is not very likely.

[7] The English noun and verb stuff [ˈstʌf] are not related to this Vulgar Latin *stuffare. They come from Old French estoffe ‘material, furniture’ and estoffer ‘equip, furnish’, respectively, which come from Medieval Latin estoffa, stoffa. The English noun stuff in particular has developed a great number of senses, including the very common informal senses ‘unspecified material’, as in Put that stuff over there, ‘household or personal articles considered as a group’, and ‘worthless objects’ (AHD).

The final source of Eng. stuff is unclear. Some have related it to Old High German *stopfôn ‘to plug with oakum’, which is a loanword from medieval Latin stuppāre ‘to plug, stop up’, derive from stuppa ‘tow, oakum’. The noun tow refers to a ‘coarse broken flax or hemp fiber prepared for spinning’ (AHD). Eng. oakum is an obsolete word for a ‘loose fiber obtained by untwisting old rope, used especially in caulking wooden ships’. The Spanish equivalent is estopa, which besides ‘tow’ and ‘oakum’, also means ‘burlap’. If this etymology is correct, then Eng. stuff would be a cognate of Sp. estopa.

[8] It is not clear whether there is a connection between Eng. stew and Sp. estofar, on one hand, and the words Eng. stove and Sp. estufa on the other. These last two nouns are often said to be false cognates, though they share a semantic component, namely ‘heating’, and some of their senses are also related, at least in some dialects of Spanish. Eng. stove refers to ‘an apparatus for cooking or heating that operates by burning fuel or using electricity’ (COED), though its primary use today is ‘apparatus for cooking’, not for heating. English stove translates into Spanish as cocina for the ‘cooking range’ sense, as hornillo for the ‘cooking ring’ sense, and as horno for the ‘oven’ sense. Sp. estufa today means primarily an ‘apparatus for heating’, though in some countries, such as Colombia and Mexico, it is also used for ‘an apparatus for cooking’, i.e. for a stove.

We know that Sp. estufa comes from late Latin or Romance stūfa, ‘an enclosed space heated artificially’, and the related verb stūfāre ‘to heat up an enclosed space’. This verb is thought to come from Vulgar Latin *extūpare or *extūpare ‘to heat with steam’, from where we saw ultimately come the verbs Eng. stew and Sp. estofar.

Experts are not sure whether Eng. stove is ultimately related to Sp. estufa and its Romance cognates. We do know that English got the word stove from Middle Dutch and/or Middle Low German stove. What is not clear is whether this word came from Proto-Germanic *stubō ‘room, living room, heated room’, or whether it was borrowed from a Romance word related to Sp. estufa, but this seems to be quite likely.

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[i] Source: “Homemade chicken tikka masala” by Rezwalker - Sopstveno delo.Previously published: http://www.parapsihopatologija.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17368&st=1845. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homemade_chicken_tikka_masala.jpg#/media/File:Homemade_chicken_tikka_masala.jpg; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tikka_masala

[ii] Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_powder (2018.10.13)