Month: September 2020
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Watermelon
Before it acquired its current name in the early seventeenth century, the watermelon was known as citrul or pasteque. The older of these words was citrul, which originated in the fourteenth century and did not fade into oblivion until the mid eighteenth century; it derived, through French and Italian, from the Latin citrus, the connection…
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Walnut
Whereas we throw rice over a newly married couple to assure their fertility, it was once a custom in ancient Rome for the bride and groom to throw walnuts at children, not because the children were brawling and ruining the wedding party, but rather to represent the casting off of the newlyweds’ childish natures. It…
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Voip
Foods that give no gastronomic delight, such as porridge or cream of celery soup, are voip; the word was invented in 1914 by Gellet Burgess, a humourist devoted to creating names for previously unnamed things. Burgess coined other food-related words as well: fidgeltick is food that requires tremendous effort to prepare, but gives little satisfaction—artichokes…
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Vittles
Although vittles might seem to be a word only a hillbilly would use, it is actually more authentic than its highbrow variant, victuals. These two synonyms for food derive from the Late Latin victualia, meaning nourishment, which in turn developed from a Latin root that meant life. The Late Latin victualia entered Old French as…
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Vindaloo
Portuguese is the source not only of tempura, the name of a Japanese seafood dish, but also of vindaloo, the name of a hot curry dish originating in India. This Indian dish—made of meat in a sauce of wine and garlic—is called in Portuguese vin d’alho, deriving from vinho, meaning wine, and alho, meaning garlic.…
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Vermouth
Vermouth takes its name from one of the bitter herbs formerly used to flavour it, an herb known in Old German as wermuota. This German name was adopted by French as vermout, which in turn was borrowed by English as vermouth in the early nineteenth century. Further back in history, the Old German wermuota—and also…
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Venison
Although venison, venom, and Venus may not seem to have much in common, they derive from the same Indo-European source, a word pronounced something like wen and meaning to desire. This Indo-European source developed into a cluster of Latin words, all beginning with ven and all somehow maintaining their ancestor’s sense of desire. Venari, for…
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Vanilla
One of the best kept secrets of ice-cream producers is that their most popular flavour, vanilla, derives its name from the Latin word vagina. For the ancient Romans, the word vagina meant sheath or scabbard, the protective casing from which a sword was drawn when danger threatened. This Latin vagina was adopted into Spanish as…
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Ullage
When you buy a bottle of wine or a carton of milk, the ullage is the space near the top of the vessel containing no liquid. The term ultimately derives from the Latin oculus, meaning eye: thanks to the Gallic contempt for consonants, the Latin oculus evolved into oeil, an unpronounceable French word meaning eye;…
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Tutti-frutti
The Italian phrase tutti-frutti means all fruits, a name that describes ice cream flavoured with a mixture of cherries, raisins, pistachios, and so on. The Italian frutti is obviously closely related to the English fruit, just as tuti derives from the same Latin source as the English total. That Latin source—totus, meaning all—also developed into…