What people in the US call “molasses” is called “treacle” in England; it’s the same stuff. The word “treacle”, though, has the more interesting history. The original form of the word was “triacle,” and at first it mean an antidote to a snake bite. It came from the Greek word “theriake,” which also meant an antidote against a poisonous bite. “Theriake” was derived from “therion,” which means a wild beast.
Back in the day — and the days we’re talking about here are around a thousand years ago — the only real remedies they had were herbal. Those tended to taste quite bitter, probably because they contained alkaloids. As a remedy for the remedy, the bitter stuff was mixed with honey. In the Middle Ages, though, “black treacle” (molasses) became available and was probably less expensive than honey, so it began to be used as the sweetener for “triacle.” It’s not clear what they called molasses back then, but it wasn’t “triacle” or “treacle.” Or “molasses,” for that matter.
“Triacle” became so closely associated with medicine (such as it was) that it gradually came to mean the same as “balm” or “salve” — that is, any generic kind of remedy, even ointments applied to the skin. In a 1535 translation of the Bible, the familiar line “Is there no balm in Gilead” was, instead, “Is there no triacle in Gilead.” Chaucer used “triacle” to mean a salve as well, in The Canterbury Tales.
As time went on, “triacle” came to mean the sweetener itself — the molasses — instead of the medicine. The pronunciation got streamlined too, to “treacle” — two syllables instead of three.
“Molasses,” on the other hand, is a relative newcomer to the language. It entered English around the late 1500s from the Portuguese word “melacos.” “Melacos” was derived from the Latin “mellacium,” which was some sort of “half-boiled” new wine. Apparently if you boil new wine you also get some kind of sweet substance, because the core word “mel” in Latin means “honey.”
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