In the sixteenth century, a diarist writing about an especially enjoyable meal might have jotted down that it was delishous, a spelling that (to my mind) looks more delicious than delicious. The now-standard spelling, however, is etymologically more correct, since delicious derives from the Latin delicere, meaning to entice. The word delight derives from the same source, though its original spelling, which prevailed from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, was delite; the shift to the modern spelling occurred as people mistakenly assumed that the word was related to light. Also related is the word delectable, and probably also delicate, delicacy, and delicatessen, the latter being a place from whence delicious, delectable, and delightful delicacies are delivered. (The abbreviated form of delicatessan\u2014deli\u2014began to appear in the 1950s.) It’s possible, too, that the word luscious, whose original meaning in the fifteenth century was pleasant to the taste, emerged as a shortened form of delicious. Unrelated to these words, but similar in meaning, are toothsome and yummy. The former came into use in the mid sixteenth century, to denote food that was pleasing to the tooth, just as the word handsome, when it emerged in the fifteenth century, referred to something that was pleasing to the hand\u2014that is, easy to manipulate. As for yummy, it’s the babe of this litter: it didn’t appear until the late nineteenth century, and was formed as an extension of yum, which emerged as a representation of palatal-labial sound that people make when they taste something delicious.<\/p>\n
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In the sixteenth century, a diarist writing about an especially enjoyable meal might have jotted down that it was delishous, a spelling that (to my mind) looks more delicious than delicious. The now-standard spelling, however, is etymologically more correct, since delicious derives from the Latin delicere, meaning to entice. The word delight derives from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d"],"yoast_head":"\n