Words from Spanish
28 words in Curio passed through Spanish on their way into English.
About Spanish
Ibero-Romance, West Iberian branch of the Romance languages in the Indo-European family · spoken today
Where
North-central Iberia, in the Kingdom of Castile → across Spain and the Americas
When
Speakers
485M
as of 2023
Speakers, Wikidata figure for 2023
Family path
- Latin
- Vulgar Latin
- Spanish
- Middle DutchItalianFrench
- English
Where it came from
Spanish evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, in dialects that developed after the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and its first systematic written use came in Toledo in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period carried it overseas, above all to the Americas.
Source: Wikipedia
Family
Spanish grew out of Vulgar Latin.
The words, A to Z
- alligator
This toothy word started life as a simple Spanish phrase meaning nothing scarier than 'the lizard.'
- armada
Behind this word for a fleet of warships hides the simple idea of getting armed.
- avocado
A Nahuatl word for a rather personal part of the body, reshaped by Spanish into something else entirely.
- bolero
A dance and a jacket share a name that once simply meant 'ball-related.'
- bonanza
A word for sudden riches that started out meaning a calm, quiet sea.
- canoe
A single word paddled its way from the Caribbean into nearly every language that met it.
- cockroach
This bug's English name is the result of a Spanish word getting mistranslated by ear into two familiar English words that have nothing to do with it.
- cork
The stopper in your wine bottle traveled through Dutch and Spanish before it ever touched English.
- dahlia
This flower carries a person's name, not a description of its petals.
- dengue
A fever named, in part, for its victims' reluctance to move at all.
- embargo
A trade ban is really just an old word for slamming a bar across the door.
- fiesta
This lively word for a party carries a plural feast hiding inside it.
- flotilla
Sometimes a fleet needs a nickname that makes it sound smaller and friendlier than it is.
- guacamole
This creamy dip's name is literally a description of its two main ingredients, spoken in an ancient Mexican language.
- lasso
The word for a roping loop actually shares its roots with the string in your shoes.
- llama
Two completely unrelated words ended up wearing the exact same spelling.
- molasses
This thick, dark syrup carries the sweetness of honey right in its name, even though there's no honey in the jar.
- mulatto
A word for a person that comes, unsettlingly, from the word for a mule.
- pantaloon
A pair of trousers that started out as one man's stage costume.
- platinum
A gleaming metal named as if it were silver's poorer cousin.
- poncho
A single blanket-like word traveled from the Andes to army surplus stores without ever losing its shape.
- potato
This everyday tuber's name traveled from the Caribbean to Spain before landing in English.
- potpourri
That bowl of fragrant dried petals shares a name with a rotten pot of stew.
- quixotic
A knight who tilted at windmills gave English an adjective for hopeless idealism.
- rodeo
Before it meant bucking broncos and cheering crowds, this word simply meant gathering the herd.
- tarantula
This eight-legged name actually started out as a town's address.
- tomato
This kitchen staple carried its name all the way from an Aztec marketplace before English got hold of it.
- vigilante
Someone who appoints themselves to stand watch — and sometimes to judge.