Food: Surprisingly Connected Etymologies
Channel: Alliterative
Date: 2022-07-26

Some sets of connected word origins featuring food.

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Transcript:
Today in “Surprisingly Connected Etymologies”, a cornucopia of food-related etymologies!

If you’re ecologically minded, you’ll likely avoid wearing fur and avoid meat products in your food because of all the pasture land it takes to farm animals. Fur comes from Old French forrer “to cover or line with fur” from Proto-Germanic fodram “sheath”, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pa- “protect, feed” (with PIE /p/ becoming Germanic /f/ due to the Grimm’s Law sound change). This root also leads to Proto-Germanic *fod- “food”, Old English foda “food”, and Modern English food. What’s more this root also gives us the word pasture through Old French from Latin pascere “to feed, graze”.

The words canopy and canapé sort of look and sound alike, but what’s the connection? Mosquitoes! Etymologically canopy means mosquito net, coming from Greek konopeion derived from konops “mosquito”. This passed into Latin canopeum which could mean both “mosquito net” and a couch with such a net. And the word canapé? Well it’s the sort of food you’d eat while lounging on such a couch!

Is there minestrone on the menu? There should be, etymologically speaking! Menu is a shortening of the French phrase menu de repas “list of what’s served at a meal”, from Middle French menu “small, detailed” (the “detailed” sense leading to the “list” sense), from Latin minutus “small”, from minus “less”. This Latin word was also combined with a comparative suffix to produce the word minister “inferior, servant” (from which of course we also get English minister). From this noun developed the verb ministrare “to serve, attend, wait upon” which eventually came to mean “to serve or prepare (food)”, eventually leading to minestra “soup” (literally “that which is served”, and minestrone in Italian, borrowed into English to refer to a particular type of Italian vegetable soup.

If you like cocktails, you should be sure to garnish your aperitif. The word garnish comes from Old French garnir “provide, furnish, fortify”, borrowed from Frankish *warnjan from Proto-Germanic *warnon, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *wer- “to cover”. This same root is at the heart of the compound *ap-wer-yo- (with the prefix *ap- “off, away”) and becomes Latin aperire “to open, uncover”, and then French apéritif “laxative, laxative liqueur” literally “opening”, because an aperitif is meant to stimulate the appetite and thus aid the digestion.

And finally, it turns out speaking of digestive juices is etymologically appropriate. The words juice and enzyme are connected by the notion of the “blending or mixing of food”, expressed by the Proto-Indo-European root *yeuə-, which has descendants meaning “soup” such as Sanskrit yua and Old Slavic jucha, and in particular Latin ius which through French gives us juice. This root also produced Greek zume meaning “leaven” (yeast or other rising agent), which gives us the word enzyme.

Thanks for watching! This is one in a series of occasional short videos about connected etymologies; to see more, you can also follow the Endless Knot on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.