Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries: English Words That Come from Spanish
Book Tracking
Sign up to add this book to your recommneded, reading, or planned reading list.
Book Cover
Paperback
Recommended By
Book Details
Written by n/a.
Buy this on Amazon
($12.95)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
Most people know that words like burrito and quesadilla come from Spanish, but there are many more English words that we would never suspect are Spanish until we look closely. Did you know that the words breeze and hammock come from Spanish? The jerky in beef jerky, for example, is from Spanish charquí, and the English verb vamoose is from the expression ¡Vamos! which means Let’s go! in Spanish. Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries: English Words that Come from Spanish tells the fascinating stories behind 200 English words from Spanish. Every sphere of English vocabulary has been enriched by Spanish, from names for animals—alligator, coyote, and mosquito—to words for weather—hurricane and tornado. This book also explores the Spanish origin of some of the colorful expressions of the Old West: bonanza, loco, mustang, ranch, and ten-gallon hat. Of course, the book digs into the many words for different foods that come from Spanish—not only the obvious ones, such as salsa and taco, but also potato, tomato, caramel, vanilla, and, most important, chocolate. Photographs and line drawings enliven the pages and illustrate the history of the words.User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Dale Brayden thinks this book is Worth Reading.
Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries, by the editors of American Heritage Dictionary, gives the etymology of about 100 words that have either been incorporated into English, or that are commonly used in English, that originated in Spanish. Many are fairly obvious Spanish words (habanero, nachos, arroyo), some less so (hurricane, volcano), and others are quite surprising (jade, gambit).
A surprising number of words entered English in different forms via different paths. For example, the word tilde, the squiggly line written over the letter 'n' to make 'n-yeh', originated from vulgate Latin 'titulus', meaning 'something written on top of'. Tilde entered English via Spanish. But 'titulus' entered English via Old French to also become the English word 'title'.
Another surprise is that a number of words came to English via Spanish via vulgate Latin via Germanic languages. These originated during the period after the fall of the western Roman empire.
In all, this is a mildly interesting book. The interest lies mostly in the view it provides of the tangled history of language evolution.