English borrows from every language it encounters. Most English words, of course, can be traced back to European languages, either from the south (think the ones related to Greek and Latin) or the north (Germanic). But English also has words that come from, of all languages, the Aztecs. This is a bit surprising because Aztec words, at least rendered in our alphabet, tend to look completely unpronounceable.
Take, for example, “tlatlocelotl.” The pairing of “t” and “l” seems to be characteristic of Aztec, or at least what Europeans thought Aztec sounded like. But sure enough, the English word “ocelot” comes directly from “tlatlocelotl.” There are some pretty common words that come from Aztec too; including “shack” — well, probably including “shack.” It’s not entirely settled, but a pretty good theory is that “shack”, which didn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1878, comes from the word “jacal” in the Mexican version of Spanish, and that word comes from the Aztec “xacalli,” which means “wooden hut.”
“Tomato,” “chili,” and “avocado” have Aztec origins too. “Tomato” comes pretty directly from the Aztec (actually Nahuatl) word “tomatl” by way of borrowed words in Portuguese, Spanish, and French. “Chili” comes from an Aztec word that you don’t, for once, have to look twice at to figure out how to pronounce: “chilli.” “Avocado” comes from “ahuacatl,” as does something made out of avocados (and tomatoes and chilis, come to think of it): “guacamole” (from “ahuacati” and “molli,” meaning sauce).
It’s no surprise that languages trade words for foods so often. After all, no European language had any equivalent word for, say, “chocolate” (another Aztec import), so why not just call it what the natives do? Or at least the closest you can. Since food is such a basic part of the human experience, it’s also no surprise that words for food acquire metaphorical uses, sometimes after the food itself has dropped in popularity. “Hash,” for example, is not all that popular for eating nowadays, but it’s very common to see a project that didn’t come together as desired and say “they made a hash of that.”
Another, older version of “hash” is a word that has completely lost its original meaning: “salmagundi.” Although it’s not in very common usage any more, a “salamagundi” is a mixture. The word can be used similarly to “miscellany.” Originally, which is back in the 1600s, a “salmagundi” was somewhat like hash; a mixture of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, onions, and maybe whatever else was lying around. The word comes from French, where they were always cooking up combinations that English cooks never seemed to think of.
Many words transition from their original meaning to being used exclusively for the figurative usage that arose later. But in the case of “salamagundi” there’s a bit of a twist. In the 1800s an adaptation of “salmagundi” as “Solomon Grundy” appeared in a children’s rhyme:
“Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday,
That is the end of Solomon Grundy.”
This didn’t happen just by chance; it was the work of James Orchard Halliwell in 1842. In fact he might have written the rhyme at lunchtime, just when he was enjoying a plate of hash with some guacamole on the side, along with a nice cup of chocolate.
