Vegetables: Surprisingly Connected Etymologies

5 pairs of vegetable-related words with surprising connections.

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Creative Commons Images:

Broccoli by Tiia Monto

Romanesco broccoli by Tiia Monto

Awl from the Swedish History Museum

Brochure by Evan Courtney

St John's Wort by Bjoertvedt

Gold ring by Arvind

Carob pods by Chixoy

Carob seeds by BIYIKLIVIKI

Basic linguistic sources here

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Transcript:

Today in “Surprisingly Connected Etymologies”, we’re getting our daily serving of vegetables.

Have you ever read a brochure about broccoli? Me neither, but etymologically it would be appropriate. Both words come from Latin broccus meaning “projecting, pointed”, which may have been borrowed from a Gaulish word related to Gaelic brog “awl”. Broccoli comes from the way the shoots look, and brochure is in reference to the way the pages were stitched together in early brochures. Oh, and another related food word is brochette, from the French for “skewer”.

What’s the connection between cauliflower and a hole? Etymology! Cauliflower comes from Italian cavoli fiori “cabbage flowers” from Latin caulis “cabbage” and flos “flower”. Latin caulis originally meant “stem”, specifically a hollow stem, from the PIE root *kel- “cover, conceal” which also led to the English words hole and hollow, following the standard Germanic sound change in which initial /k/ became /h/, part of what’s called Grimm’s Law – yes, as in the Brothers Grimm, because Jakob Grimm was a linguist as well as a collector of folktales. By the way, that first part of cauliflower is also related to the first part of coleslaw and the word kale – note that those words have the /k/ sounds since they too were borrowed from Latin caulis instead of coming through a Germanic route. And that’s no folktale!

This next one is particularly apt for a discussion of word origins: A radish is a root, and etymologically this is true as well. Radish comes from Latin radix “root” which in turn comes from the PIE root *wrad- “branch, root”, which through the Germanic branch of languages, passing through Old Norse rot “root” and characteristically losing the /w/ before /r/ as is typical in Scandinavian languages, replacing the Old English form wyrt “root, herb, plant” (which survives in plant names like St. John’s wort) gives us the word root. Radical, dude!

If you’ve ever mixed up the words carrot (the vegetable) and carat (the measure of the fineness of gold or weight of diamonds, don’t be embarrassed – because it turns out they’re related! Carrot can be traced back through French and Latin to the Greek word karoton, from the PIE root *ker- “horn” (which indeed gave us the word horn, with the same k to h sound change we saw in cauliflower), because the carrot is shaped like a horn. Also because of its hornlike shape, the related word in Greek keration referred to the seed pod of the carob tree. This Greek word passed into Arabic as qirat, where it came to be used as a small unit of weight (one carob seed = 1 qirat), and from that we eventually get the English word carat, as used by jewelers.

And finally, it’s Halloween and a little costumed witch comes to your door. Do you give them candy or vegetables? Vegetables of course, because you know your etymology! Although the etymology of witch, from Old English wicce, is not entirely certain, it may well come from the PIE root *weg- “to be strong, lively”, through Germanic *wikkjaz “necromancer”, from the idea of “waking the dead”. And this same root, coming through Latin, gives us vegetable, literally something that is alive.

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.